"Earlier this year, dozens of autonomous vehicles from the Chinese company Baidu suddenly stopped in their tracks in Wuhan, China, triggering major chaos and sparking alarm among lawmakers in Beijing. Not much later, the country's government decided to stop issuing new licenses for new autonomous vehicles altogether, as Bloomberg reported last week, once again highlighting persistent pain points in the rollout of the tech - not to mention how far Beijing is willing to go to intervene when things go south."
"As Fortune points out, a strikingly similar situation is playing out in the United States - yet federal regulations are nowhere in sight. Robotaxis from both Waymo and Tesla are still relying on human operators, stealing luggage, or colliding with objects and animals in the streets. Federal regulators are even investigating a Waymo vehicle crashing into a child outside of an elementary school."
"A massive power outage in San Francisco caused Waymo's fleet to clog up the city's streets late last year, forcing the company to shut down the service entirely in a debacle eerily reminiscent of the March incident in Wuhan. In short, it's an endless list of collisions and near misses that should have any federal government consider pausing new licenses for autonomous vehicles, like in China."
"But for now, there's been no sign of the type of sweeping action that China is clearly willing to take. Instead, autonomous vehicle regulations largely rely on a patchwork of rules that vary state by state. The country has no federal autonomous vehicle safety law, Fortune reports, while a bipartisan House bill remains no more than a draft and previous attempts have stalled."
Autonomous vehicles have experienced serious disruptions and safety incidents in multiple cities. In Wuhan, dozens of Baidu autonomous vehicles stopped, causing chaos and prompting concern from lawmakers. China then halted issuing new licenses for autonomous vehicles. Similar problems have occurred in the United States, where robotaxis from Waymo and Tesla still use human operators and have been linked to theft, collisions, and crashes investigated by federal regulators. A San Francisco power outage clogged streets and led Waymo to shut down service. Despite these recurring incidents, the U.S. has no federal autonomous vehicle safety law, and federal action remains limited to state-by-state patchwork rules while industry growth continues.
Read at Futurism
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