There should always be a person in the loop, especially for safety. This sounds dangerous.
We’ve been doing humans for like 200 thousand plus years. I say let the machine have a go at it.
I can’t read that beyond the first couple of lines. It keeps giving me a pop-up that says subscribe to read.
Here ya go, Friend:
WASHINGTON, June 25 (Reuters) - The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration proposed on Thursday to end a government requirement for manual brake pedals in self-driving vehicles, a move that would make it easier to deploy such vehicles on U.S. roads. The proposal would not apply to vehicles with human driver controls and NHTSA said it would not drop braking performance requirements, including strict stopping distance standards for self-driving vehicles.
It is one of a number of changes proposed by the agency to facilitate the roll-out of self-driving vehicles. NHTSA is in the process of developing safety performance tests for self-driving vehicles as part of a separate standard. Automakers have previously expressed frustration with the agency’s slow review of autonomous vehicles. Under the law, fully self-driving vehicles do not need NHTSA approval if they have required human controls, like steering wheels, brake pedals or mirrors. NHTSA has authority to grant petitions to allow up to 2,500 vehicles per manufacturer yearly to operate on U.S. roads without required human controls, but the agency has spent years reviewing several exemption petitions without taking action.
Last year, NHTSA said it was streamlining reviews of those exemption requests. In March, NHTSA said it was seeking public comment on Amazon’s (AMZN.O), opens new tab self-driving unit Zoox to deploy up to 2,500 purpose-built, steering-wheel-free robotaxis without human controls. In 2018, GM (GM.N), opens new tab petitioned NHTSA to deploy up to 2,500 cars without steering wheels or brake pedals on U.S. roads, before withdrawing the petition in 2020. The Detroit automaker sought NHTSA approval to deploy vehicles without human controls again in 2022 but that petition was withdrawn in October 2024. Separately, NHTSA on Thursday withdrew a Biden-era proposal to adopt a voluntary national framework for the evaluation and oversight of self-driving vehicles. The agency said automakers expressed concern the requirements were too stringent, while some safety advocates said it would not provide NHTSA with sufficient oversight to ensure an appropriate level of safety.
Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Nia Williams
They are removing brake pedals to make it easier to put these vehicles on the road. Can someone explain to me the logic? On a sidenote, if there’s no manual brake pedal if there’s no physical way for me to stop that car that override what the car is doing I’m not getting in.
SMAE! Brake Pedal, Brake Lever, something or it’s a NOPE right outa there!
So, this is for 100% automated cabs. There would be no driver controls whatsoever in these. That way you can use every seat for a passenger. But there is a federal requirement for a brake pedal. This means despite there being no steering wheel, a brake pedal would still be present. But why? There’s a whole bunch of extra hardware for the pedal, and it will never actually be used in normal operation. So that regulation needs to be removed if there are no other human controls to enable robot.
I don’t have an opinion for or against robot cabs. Just explaining what it’s going on here.
Hear me out, we need more break pedals… available for people that are not in the diver seat… to manually stop the car in case of an emergency
And remove the emergency brakes on trains and trams whilst you’re at it, why don’t you.
This isn’t as big a deal as it seems. These self-driving cars aren’t using the pedals, anyway. And many EVs now have a “one-pedal driving” feature where even a human doesn’t use the brake pedal: you brake by letting up on the accelerator, and let the car figure out when to engage the friction brakes or only the regenerative brakes.
The only thing you lose is the direct connection between the brake pedal and the brake lights, but let’s face it, that’s going through computers also and probably hasn’t been an actual switch since the last millennium.
Yes because what could possibly go wrong?
Even with “one-pedal driving,” there’s still a physical brake pedal for backup/emergencies.
