In an ironic twist, Communist-controlled China has virtually no regulations on self-driving long-haul trucks, while backers of the technology here in the U.S. continue imploring politicians to ease up on their back-seat driving and give autonomous tech more control behind the wheel.
China is getting closer to launching fleets of self-driving tractor-trailers thanks to soft regulations fueled mostly by the country’s goal to streamline its chaotic trucking industry, according to MIT Technology Review.
“This could provide a handy edge in the race to develop a lucrative new way of hauling goods,” MIT notes in the article which was published recently in the journal’s robotic section.
Just this week in the U.S., the Self-Driving Coalition for Safer Streets, founded by Ford, Google, Lyft, Uber and Volvo Cars, responded to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s guidance for the operation of autonomous vehicles and asked, in part, that Congress pave the way for fully autonomous vehicles.
“The Coalition’s foremost priority is the safe development and deployment of fully-self driving vehicles. We support the development of a single national framework and urge NHTSA to discourage state and local policymakers from pursuing their own rules and contributing to an inconsistent patchwork of regulations,” says the Coalition’s General Counsel, David Strickland.
“Furthermore, the federal government should take additional steps to enable safe and rapid deployment. It is now time for NHTSA to pursue targeted rulemakings to amend key safety standards that limit L4/L5 vehicles by currently mandating human operation, and we call on Congress to enact legislation to facilitate deployment of fully self-driving technology.
