Recently, the U.S. Department of Transportation's National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) released the first Occupant Protection Safety Standards for Vehicles Without Driving Controls, which has not yet disclosed the specific effective date. The rule says the effective date is inserted 180 days after the final rule is published in the Federal Register.
If effective, this would mean that fully autonomous vehicles would no longer need to be equipped with manual controls such as traditional steering wheels, brakes or accelerator pedals to meet occupant safety protection standards in a collision. NHTSA describes the new rule as a "historic step."
"By 2030, an important part of the U.S. Department of Transportation's safety mission will be to ensure that safety standards keep pace with the development of autonomous driving and autonomous driving assistance systems," said U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. ”
The new rule was first proposed in March 2020 and passed two years later. This is an important node in the development of the autonomous driving industry, and the safety standards that self-driving cars must have human driver control have changed, that is, self-driving cars no longer need to comply with the requirement that "always have a human driver's seat, car steering wheel and steering column, or only one passenger seat on the outside of the front row".
Steven Cliff, deputy director of NHTSA, said, "In ads-equipped vehicles, the need to ensure human safety remains the same as drivers change from humans to machines, and must be integrated from the start. ”
Source: Cruise
In February, General Motors and its self-driving technology arm Cruise filed an application with NHTSA to allow the production of self-driving cars without human controls such as steering wheels or brake pedals, Reuters reported.
NHTSA also said that for vehicles designed to be operated only by ADS, manual driving control is logically unnecessary.
At the same time, NHTSA also emphasizes in the new regulations that self-driving cars must provide the same level of occupant protection as human-driven vehicles.
Specifically, the new rules state that children should not occupy a position that traditionally belongs to the driver, as the location was not designed with the protection of children in the event of a collision in mind. But if a child takes the driver's place, the car will not be asked to stop immediately.
NHTSA said existing regulations do not currently prohibit automakers from deploying self-driving cars as long as they have manual driving control systems, and manufacturers still need to apply to NHTSA for exemptions to sell their ADS-equipped vehicles as NHTSA continues to consider changing other safety standards.
Prior to the new rule, U.S. occupant protection standards were written for common, traditional vehicle features. But the new regulations have been updated accordingly , which have helped clarify what automakers need to do to meet occupant protection standards when producing vehicles without traditional manually controlled ADS.
In fact, this is not the first time that the U.S. authorities have updated their autonomous driving regulations. NHTSA has been actively involved in monitoring and overseeing the safety testing and deployment of these autonomous vehicles. For example, NHTSA has been closely monitoring Tesla's FSD testing, and has repeatedly put forward regulatory requirements and even recalls on Tesla's Autopilot operation and FSD testing.
Last summer, NHTSA issued a regulation requiring vehicles equipped with ADS or certain advanced driver assistance systems to submit crash and accident reports. Such a report would help NHTSA investigators quickly identify possible flaws in these self-driving systems.
In addition, NHTSA began developing rules last year to set safety standards for emergency braking of autonomous vehicles, a driver-assist technology that can help avoid collisions with other road users, including pedestrians. For the first time, NHTSA will consider incorporating Advanced Driver Assistance System (ADAS) features such as automatic emergency braking, blind spot detection, and lane-keeping assist into the government's vehicle safety rating standards. This signals that the previous safety standards may have to be adjusted, as the previous safety standards only assessed the occupant protection of the vehicle through crash tests, but did not take into account the safety of the vehicle to pedestrians on the road while driving.
U.S. authority officials said, "The idea for NHTSA is to update the car's safety rating, and advanced driver assistance features will play a very important role in the safety rating." ”
At present, China and the United States are actively carrying out autonomous driving technology competitions, while enterprises are actively conducting technical research, the two governments are also constantly introducing new policies and regulations to provide assistance for industrial development.
On the whole, the policy development speed of the United States is very fast, not only took the lead in allowing automatic driving to test on the road, allowing the removal of safety personnel, etc., and now has made breakthroughs in vehicle collision safety, occupant protection, etc. I believe that the mainland government will also follow up quickly in the next step to provide new impetus for industrial development.
Source: Surging News, Car Things and other network content synthesis