U.S. to decide soon on GM’s request to deploy cars without steering wheels::U.S. regulators will soon decide on a petition filed by General Motors’ Cruise self-driving technology unit seeking permission to deploy up to 2,500 self-driving vehicles annually without human controls, a top auto safety official said on Wednesday.
From the article, this looks like it’s for GM’s “Cruise” program, which is already out there in limited scope in a couple cities. It’s aself-driving car service limited to a small area of San Francisco and… I want to say Austin?
They’re already operating vehicles that are essentially “self-driving” now. This is about rolling out a new class of vehicle using the same technology, but without the human controls.
I don’t know a lot about the service, or what, exactly it does, but I suspect it works well because the area the vehicles operate in is extremely limited and the vehicles can have an incredibly detailed, and up-to-date map of that area. I’d also wager the area selected is free of most obstacles and has only one type of terrain, i.e., “downtown low-speed streets” or similar.
That said, I can’t imagine the NTSHA will allow a vehicle on the road without any sort of manual emergency control mechanism in place. Though, it may be very rudimentary, like others have suggested, a joystick and a throttle/brake intended to get the vehicle somewhere safe so people can get out.
This is Level 4 automation, and even it needs a human override. Can’t override without a steering wheel.
I think this whole plan is just a gimmick to dangle that carrot in front of the public, fooling them into thinking Level 5 full automation is just around the corner, when it really, really, really isn’t.