Tesla Motors Inc. says the self-driving element associated with being included in a May 7 deadly crash is exploratory, yet it’s been installed on each of the 70,000 of its cars since October 2014. “First of all, the news of the accident is very sad,” BMW CEO Harald Krueger said at an event in Munich. “Technology for highly autonomous driving isn’t ready for series production yet.”
The NHTSA office arranged an agreement to speed the presentation of automatic emergency braking prior this year, disappointing safety groups who say they had no information and said car manufacturers promises to install the technology couldn’t be implemented by law. The NHTSA is required to declare rules this month that will set a few parameters for self-driving cars on U.S. streets. Google says its cars have covered 1.5 million miles and are currently being tested on the streets in Mountain View, Calif., Austin, Texas, Kirkland, Wash., and the Phoenix metropolitan area. “In this case, we clearly bear some responsibility, because if our car hadn’t moved there wouldn’t have been a collision,” Google said in its report.
“Allowing automakers to do their own testing, with no specific guidelines, means consumers are going to be the guinea pigs in this experiment,” said Jackie Gillan, president for Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, a longtime Washington consumer lobbyist who has helped shape numerous auto-technology mandates. “We want to minimize the road kill,” Gillan said. “You set standards for testing so everyone is abiding by the same rules. You can’t just let these companies put this technology on the road and let owners find their own way. That’s not good enough.”
With incidents like this it definitely looks as if self-driving cars being the main mode of transportation is still further off than expected so go ahead and buy a traditional car while they last and should you require shipping in the future let Thrifty Auto Shipping handle the car transport for you.
