US auto safety head calls for 100% increase in safety with self-driving vehicles

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Mark Rosekind, head of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), argues driverless cars need to be twice as safe in order to provide tangible benefits for consumers.

The number of road deaths in 2015 climbed to 38,300 from 32,675 in 2014 and Mark Rosekind, head of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, said, “It’s a 747 crashing every week for a year, that’s what the losses are on our highways. And that is unacceptable.”

According to a Bloomberg report, companies touting self-driving cars as a solution to this issue have been handed a new target. “I’d actually like to throw the gauntlet down. We need to start with two times better. We need to set a higher bar if we expect safety to actually be a benefit here,” said Rosekind.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx will announce the specifics of the autonomous-auto regulations in July 2016 that will make way quickly for the deployment of self-driving cars. Rosekind did not reveal any details about the new regulations but added that the rules will offer “deployment and operational guidance for how to get all of these autonomous new safety technologies on the road safely.”

In anticipation of regulatory support, a number of automakers and technology companies have begun work on driverless car technology. The NHTSA recently approved Google’s requests for interpretation in terms of braking, vehicle controls and displays, and rear visibility among others.

Despite the traction gained in development and regulation, US drivers are still not confident about the idea of using self-driving vehicles. Authors of a report from the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute (UMTRI) said, “Public opinion has been remarkably consistent over the two years that this survey has been conducted. The general patterns of responses have not changed over the course of these two surveys, despite the increased media coverage of self-driving vehicles.”

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