The U.S. Department of Transportation recently released a new report outlining its position on Autonomous Transportation development. The report, “Preparing for the Future of Transportation: Automated Vehicles 3.0 (AV 3.0)”, in their words is “another milestone in the Department’s development of a flexible, responsible approach to a framework for multimodal automation”. It goes on to state that the purpose of AV 3.0 is to communicate the Department’s agenda to the public and stakeholders on important policy issues, and identifies opportunities for cross-modal collaboration. Upon review of the six U.S. DOT Automation Principles, principles number two and number three make it quite clear that their agenda is to step aside while passing the baton to the private sector to drive the bus (literally). The following article does an excellent job of explaining what is going on – and an interesting theory as to why.
The US Department of Transportation (DOT) is sweeping aside regulation of autonomous vehicle testing in favour of a system of voluntary standards.
The safety guidelines will be voluntary because federal regulation risks strangling the industry in red tape, according to a new report from the DOT, published on 4 October.
