Self-driving or driverless cars are not yet fully ready to be used on the roads. This has been the announcement of a Robotics expert in the congress amidst the introduction of a slew of state laws that regulate the autonomous cars.
Missy Cummings, Director of Duke University's Robotics Program told the legislators that driverless cars aren't not yet geared to face various conditions on the roads. Cummings claimed that the cars aren't ready yet to beat the bad weather conditions, including drizzling rain, sudden downpours, standing water, and snow. The Robotics expert also added that driverless cars are not yet designed to follow a police officer's direction, US News reports. Cummings also warned that the GPS navigation systems of the self-driving cars are easier to hack.
"I am decidedly less optimistic about what I perceive to be a rush to field systems that are absolutely not ready for widespread deployment, and certainly not ready for humans to be completely taken out of the driver's seat," she told the Senate commerce committee.
On Tuesday, Google and General Motors had expressed their concern that the patchworks of state laws could stop the deployment of the driverless cars on the roads, Phys Org reported. Driverless cars advocates including Google, automaker General Motors, ride-sharing service Lyft and auto supplier Delphi are urging the Congress to regulate laws on self-driving cars.
"If every state is left to go its own way without a unified approach, operating self-driving cars across state boundaries would be an unworkable situation and one that will significantly hinder safety innovation, interstate commerce, national competitiveness and the eventual deployment of autonomous vehicles," Chris Urmson, technical leader of Google's self-driving car project told the committee. He claimed that 53 bills regulating autonomous cars were brought by legislators in 23 states in the previous years,according to USA Today.
With the tedious rule process regulating driverless cars, critics believe that it would take more years for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to be able to issue regulations on new technologies. They argued that because of the long process, the new technologies would be already replaced by newer technologies by the time the regulations would be approved. Cummings expressed her doubts that the NHTSA would be able set standards for automakers to avoid the hacker's intrusion.
