US trade watchdog boss goes all Kendrick Lamar on self-driving cars The head of US trade watchdog the FTC has pushed for companies to loosen their ties over self-driving cars. Speaking at an event for the National Highway Transit Safety Administration (NHTSA), FTC boss Maureen Ohlhausen said legislators need to use "regulatory humility" when it comes to autopilots. Touting the self-driving …
That would be nice, but I have a feeling Google will be lobbying heavily behind the scenes against that. Knowing where you go and when is more information to feed their advertising monster, and they won't willingly give it up. Oh sure, publicly they'll probably say they don't want to collect that info, but privately their lobbyists will be working overtime coming up with loopholes they can quietly use!
Far too many people are just granting the assumption that fully autonomous cars will be fantastically, almost perfectly, safe. This is in spite of the famous failures (Tesla, Volvo, others...). Okay then, so no speed limits on autonomous cars? Let them careen through the city as fast as their little "Strong AI" pea-brains will allow them. LOL...
Another idiotic assumption is that having shared vehicles that fail to stop and park when not occupied will somehow, magically-inherently, diminish congestion on the roads and somehow save energy and emissions.
Allow me to explain the issue:
M = A-to-B + Y-to-Z (morning) + B-to-A + Z-to-Y (evening)
N = A-to-B + B-to-Y + Y-to-Z (morning) + Z-to-B + B-to-A + A-to-Z + Z-to-Y (evening)
News Flash: N > M
This: Shared vehicles (autonomous or taxis) need to relocate when empty. Think about it.
Perhaps there may be some secondary or tertiary effect will counteract this obvious fact that N>M, but that's all hand-wavy magic. Too many people just gleefully assume the opposite of the direct primary effects, because they're not thinking. Telephone Sanitizers all.
They are well aware, Google, Tesla et al are all generally aligned with developing their code cheaply and beta testing on the unsuspecting public.
This is where the lobbying is coming from, it's to minimise their costs and has SFA to do with innovation.
I don't want cars controlled by buggy software on the roads until the liability questions are resolved. Will the self-driving cars come with the standard EULA saying the software company is not liable for any loss associated with the use of their buggy mess? So, they can snatch all your data, crash and kill you, but, you can never hold them liable for any of it? And, I'm sure none of them would cheat. That would be like designing software to avoid regulators or falsify emission test results. Who would do such things?
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