Could activating your smartphone’s “do not disturb” feature save your life?
New research by the American Automobile Association (AAA) has examined the effectiveness of smartphone-blocking tech to curb driver distraction. According to NHTSA, distracted driving contributes to more than 9% of fatal crashes, although researchers believe that number is higher. Despite texting bans in almost all 50 states, distraction remains a prevalent problem among drivers, especially […]
Trump set to streamline regulations to promote AV development
The Trump Administration is streamlining some regulations to support the development of autonomous vehicles (AVs), US Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy announced on Thursday. “This Administration understands that we’re in a race with China to out-innovate, and the stakes couldn’t be higher,” Duffy said in a Thursday press release. “As part of DOT’s [Department of Transportation] innovation agenda, our […]
San Francisco: Waymo vehicle caught up in fatal collision
A deadly, multi-car collision in San Francisco on Sunday evening has marked the first time in the US that a truly autonomous vehicle, with no one in the driver’s seat, has been involved in a fatal collision, according to federal transportation records. The Waymo vehicle involced in the incident was entirely blameless, however. The self-driving Waymo car […]
US “presses the reset button” on V2X technology
US safety advocates have been touting the potential of technology that allows vehicles to communicate wirelessly for years, but the USDOT is releasing a roadmap it hopes will speed up deployment of that technology – and save thousands of lives in the process, says NPR. “This is proven technology that works,” Shailen Bhatt, head of […]
Zoox: NHTSA investigating Amazon self-driving subsidiary after two accidents
Federal regulators want more information from Zoox as part of an ongoing investigation into the Amazon subsidiary’s self-driving vehicles. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) confirmed in May that it was looking into two accidents involving Zoox AVs, reports IoT World Today. On both occasions, a Toyota Highlander fitted with Zoox’s Automated Driving System braked unexpectedly, causing the […]
Waymo under investigation after reports of AV crashes and ‘traffic violations’
The US government’s highway safety agency (NHTSA) has opened another investigation of automated driving systems, this time into crashes involving Waymo’s self-driving vehicles. NHTSA posted documents detailing the probe on its website yesterday after getting 22 reports of Waymo vehicles either crashing or doing something that may have violated traffic laws. In the past month, the agency […]
US announces more driverless standards
The US Department of Transportation’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has issued a final rule to modernise numerous Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards. It’s also designed to clarify what the NHTSA calls ambiguities in current occupant protection standards for vehicles equipped with automated driving systems that are designed without traditional manual driver controls. The rule amends several […]
