Google urges US to shake self-driving laws

magician caption Google considers self-driving car should have no steering wheel or pedals
Google's self-driving car chief urged lawmakers to ensure the United States establishes a lawful technology.
Chris Urmson told a Senate hearing that the US transportation secretary should be given power over the matter, and not left to the discretion of individual states.
He also confirmed the opinion of the company, it would be safer if passengers are not able to override the autonomous vehicle system.
This contrasts with the views of the California regulator.
State Department of Motor Vehicles has published draft regulations in December that said the trained person must still be able to take control.
Mr. Urmson noted that 23 states now found a total of 53 legislative acts concerning self-driving vehicles, some of which are in conflict with each other.
Chris UrmsonImage copyrightUS Senate
Image captionMr Urmson US Transportation Secretary wants to take responsibility self-driving laws
"At the present time we are faced with a growing patchwork of state laws and regulations relating to self-driving cars, which has the potential to become unworkable," said Mr. Urmson.
"If every state is going its own way, it would be highly impractical to operate an autonomous vehicle across state borders."
His view was echoed in the Senate Commerce Committee on LYFT pickup service, which is working with General Motors, to develop their own vehicles Driverless.
"The worst possible scenario for the growth of autonomous vehicles is inconsistent and contradictory patchwork of local, municipal and county laws that will hinder efforts to bring the autonomous vehicle technology to market," said Joseph Okpaku, LYFT director of public policy.
"Rules are necessary, but the regulatory restraint and the sequence is equally important, if we want this industry to realize their full potential."
leadership
Risks associated with the self-driving vehicles in their current state have been isolated in the last month, when one Google car caused a collision with a bus in the city of Santa Clara, California.
Google car crashImage copyrightAP
Image captionPart car company Google has been left stuck on a bus with which he faced
One expert robotics at the hearing urged senators to resist the pressure to allow the public to use the self-driving car too early, and said the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) should assume a greater leadership of the tests at the same time.
Missy Cummings Professor of Duke University said that she thought it was "self-driving community" was "deficient" in the way he carries out his experiments to date.
"I see [it] to be a rush to systems that are not ready for widespread," she explained.
"[One issue] is an operation in bad weather conditions, including standing water on roads, drizzling rain, sudden downpours and snow.
"The combination of these restrictions to the impossibility of self-driving cars to follow traffic policeman gestures - especially on a rainy day in Poncho - means of self driving car should not really be working near the elementary school at this time.
"Another serious problem with the self-driving cars is their vulnerability to malicious intent or even a prankster. For example, relatively easy to replace GPS from self-driving vehicles, which includes hacking their systems and drive them off course.
"In addition, recent studies have shown that $ 60 [£ 42] a laser device and can deceive self-driving vehicles in sensitive objects that do not exist."
Rainy roadImage copyrightThinkstock
Image captionProf Cummings has concerns about self-driving cars performance in bad weather
transparency
Professor Cummings also set his sights on a statement by Mr. Urmson, that Google self-driving car, to date, have already traveled 1.4 million miles (2.25 million km) on the road, noting that a taxi fleet in New York went on to a little more than days.
She suggested that 275 million miles must be driven by fatality free before self-driving could be said to be safer than vehicles under the control of man. At the same time, Professor Cummings says that companies need to be more transparent about the tests carried out by them.
One of the technology firms responded, stressing that self-driving vehicles used multiple sensors simultaneously.
"Each of these technologies has its own strengths and weaknesses," explained Glen Delphi Devo.
"In some cases, vision or Lidar [laser-based system] could be jeopardized weather, but the radar is very strong in the weather.
"It is absolutely true that the sensors have strengths and weaknesses, but by combining these sensors you end up with a much more capable package, of course, with more features than the perception of the individual [] driver, relying on eyesight alone."
leapfrog risk
One of the senators raised the likelihood that the US could fall behind other countries if it did not heed the warning from Google and come up with a single set of rules.
Senator Cory BookerImage copyrightGetty Images
Image captionSenator Cory Booker is concerned that the UK will mess with the US self-driving technology
"We were the first to introduce legislation that allows testing of autonomous vehicles, but other countries are now clearly pushing upon us, offering more flexibility for companies to test this technology," said Senator Cory Booker.
"In the UK, for example, is rapidly moving forward ... and Japan has allowed Nissan and Toyota, to check their cars there in 2013.
He added: "If [the current regulatory regimes] have been at the time of the Wright brothers, we would never have got off the ground in the study of air travel."
Chancellor George Osborne's Treasury is expected to confirm on Wednesday the expansion of self-driving test in the UK, allowing computer-controlled trucks to divide the section of the highway with the population at the end of this year.