Consumer Watchdog Asks California DMV To Require Police To Investigate Robot Car Crashes

Consumer Watchdog asked the California Department of Motor Vehicles to amend its autonomous vehicle regulation to require police to investigate any crashes of robot cars being tested on public roads, a CW news release said Thursday. “Robot car accident reports are prepared and filed by the company doing the testing,” Consumer Watchdog Privacy Project Director John Simpson wrote in a letter to DMV Director Jean Shiomoto. “Relying solely on the word of the testing company is not adequate to protect the legitimate public interest in ensuring robot cars are tested safely.” The DMV also should require any data and video gathered by a robot car before and during a crash to be provided to the department, CW said. After personally identifying information is redacted, the video and data should be released to the public, it said. CW has been criticizing Google over the safety of autonomous cars (see 1406110040), with the company saying it's open to releasing driverless car accident reports (see 1506030036).