New York City announced a new permitting system for companies interested in testing autonomous vehicles on its roads, including a requirement that a human safety driver sit behind the steering wheel at all times. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n
As cities like San Francisco continue to grapple with the problems posed by fully driverless for-hire vehicles, New York City is trying to get ahead of the problem by outlining what it calls \u201ca rigorous permitting program\u201d that it claims will ensure applicants are \u201cready to test their technology in the country\u2019s most challenging urban environment safely and proficiently.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\u201cThis technology is coming whether we like it or not,\u201d Mayor Eric Adams said in a statement to The Verge<\/em>, \u201cso we\u2019re going to make sure that we get it right.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cThis technology is coming whether we like it or not\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The requirements would exclude companies without previous autonomous vehicle testing experience in other cities. Applicants would need to submit information from previous tests, including details on any crashes that occurred and how often safety drivers have to take control of the vehicle (also known in California as \u201cdisengagements). And in what is sure to be the most controversial provision, fully driverless vehicles won\u2019t be permitted to test on the city\u2019s public roads; only vehicles with safety drivers will be allowed. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n A small handful of companies, including Waymo and Cruise, have deployed driverless vehicles, also known as Level 4 automation \u2014 but issues around traffic obstruction and safety have stymied their rollout. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n Last October, a driverless Cruise vehicle dragged a pedestrian over 20 feet to the curb on a street in San Francisco, spurring regulators to suspend the company\u2019s operations permit. Several months later, a driverless Waymo vehicle struck a bicyclist, causing minor injuries. City officials in San Francisco have\u00a0criticized both companies\u00a0for blocking roads and obstructing buses and emergency vehicles.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n New York City is hoping to avoid similar problems by requiring companies to keep safety drivers in the vehicles at all times. Under Adams\u2019 proposal, companies would still need to obtain a permit from the state Department of Motor Vehicles. In addition, applicants would have to provide details on how their safety drivers are hired and trained and \u201cattest that they will follow recent best practices from the Society of Automotive Engineers.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/div>\n New York City is hoping to avoid similar problems by requiring companies to keep safety drivers in the vehicles at all times<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Naturally, autonomous vehicles would be required to follow all traffic laws and curb regulations. Likewise, companies would need to submit \u201cassurance protocols for how the operator will compensate for any AV system limitation or failure and proactively intervene to avoid potential crashes.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/div>\n Data from AV testing will eventually be available on the city\u2019s Open Data portal, a spokesperson said. As part of the application process, the city\u2019s Department of Transportation will review requests from applicants to withhold certain data from disclosure on the basis of confidentiality.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n While other states have become hotbeds for AV testing, New York has been a bit of a ghost town. Part of the reason could be the state\u2019s strict rules, which include mandating that safety drivers keep their hands on the wheel at all times. The state law originally required a police escort, but a renewal of the\u00a0law several years ago removed that language. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n In 2017,\u00a0Cruise announced plans\u00a0to test its self-driving vehicles in lower Manhattan, but\u00a0those plans were later scuttled\u00a0with little explanation as to why. Boston-based\u00a0Optimus Ride tested autonomous shuttles in Brooklyn but only on private roads as part of the borough\u2019s Navy Yard. Mobileye, a division of Intel, also tested a couple of vehicles\u00a0in the city. And Waymo said it would bring its manually driven vehicles for mapping purposes. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n Automakers and tech companies testing AVs tend to flock to states with friendlier regulations (like Arizona and Texas) or places that are more convenient to their headquarters (like California). New York is neither, but it does represent one of the biggest taxi markets in the world \u2014 and therefore is a ripe target for robotaxi companies. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n[ad_2]\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [ad_1] New York City announced a new permitting system for companies interested in testing autonomous vehicles on its roads, including a requirement that a human safety driver sit behind the steering wheel at all times. As cities like San Francisco continue to grapple with the problems posed by fully driverless for-hire vehicles, New York City …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":33804,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33803"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33803"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33803\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33804"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33803"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33803"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33803"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}