Congress Urged to Regulate Self-Driving Vehicles

(House Committee on Energy and Commerce/YouTube)[Stay on top of transportation news: Get TTNews in your inbox.] Currently, AV manufacturers can deploy a maximum of 2,500 self-driving vehicles for testing, provided they have permission from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Industry advocates argued July 26 that accidents involving self-driving vehicles are exaggerated and that the machines are already far more reliable than human beings. Gary Shapiro, head of the Consumer Technology Association, told the committee that self-driving vehicles “are never distracted, never tired, they don’t get drunk and they don’t fall asleep.”ImageShapiro cites some of the vulnerabilities human drivers have their autonomous vehicles do not. But auto safety advocates have cast doubt on industry claims about the safety of autonomous vehicles and the numbers they use to back up those claims.