Earlier this week, US regulators issued the final rules that removed the requirement on autonomous vehicles makers that mandated the companies to equip self driving cars with manual driving controls.
For those unaware, the autonomous vehicles sold in the US were required to feature human driving controls to meet the crash standards. Hence, automobile manufacturers and even tech companies faced challenges in developing automated driving systems (ADS) without any manual driving controls (Via Gadgets360). These standards were set decades ago, but have now been removed in America. Just last month, automobile giant General Motors and its self driving unit Cruise petitioned the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to build and deploy a fully autonomous vehicle that do not feature steering wheels or brake pedals.
Notably, the revision in the rules also assume that cars “will always have a driver’s seat, a steering wheel and accompanying steering column, or just one front outboard passenger seating position.” But the regulators added that “For vehicles designed to be solely operated by an ADS, manually operated driving controls are logically unnecessary.” These new rules were first proposed back in March 2020 and have finally been adopted.
NHTSA Deputy Administrator Steven Cliff stated that “As the driver changes from a person to a machine in ADS-equipped vehicles, the need to keep the humans safe remains the same and must be integrated from the beginning.” Although, the NHTSA added that children should not occupy seats that are typically reserved for “drivers.” So now, we can expect to see more autonomous cars that do not require any human interaction from their passengers.
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