Consumer Group Says Google Trying To Skirt US Safety Laws for Driverless Tech

Consumer Watchdog wants transportation regulators to reject Google's proposal seeking federal help to fast track its self-driving car technology through regulatory hurdles so the company can go to market. "Though couched in euphemisms and poll-tested terminology, Google’s ploy is obvious. It plainly hopes to obtain a congressional bailout from the nation’s automobile safety laws," the group wrote in a 10-page letter Thursday to Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx and Mark Rosekind, administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). Consumer Watchdog said Google's cars are "dangerous," citing several statistics, and "can't cope" in routine traffic situations, pointing to a February incident in which a Google driverless car and California public transit bus crashed into each other. No one was injured. In a March 11 letter to Foxx, Chris Urmson, who heads Google's self-driving cars project, outlined the company's proposal that supports new authority for the transportation secretary to allow implementation of innovative safety technologies in cars following public notice and comment. He said "current authority is insufficient to keep pace with safety technologies being developed," such as adaptive beam headlights, side mirror-replacing sensors, and new automated systems necessary for fully self-driving cars. Consumer Watchdog said Google wants to replace an "open and accountable process" with an expedited one "that will favor the tech giant's business and marketing plans at the expense of consumers and the marketplace by permitting the company to collude with DOT and NHTSA behind closed doors and out of sight of the public and the news media." While automotive safety laws have made roads safer, a Google spokesman emailed Thursday that more than "33,000 people still die on our roads each year and we believe that self-driving cars can make a difference. Today’s rules were written with yesterday’s cars in mind and that’s why there needs to be a way to allow life-saving innovations on the roads once that technology has been proven to provide a equal or higher level of safety than existing standards."