Consumer Watchdog Backs Proposed Chicago Ordinance Limiting Self-Driving Vehicles

Consumer Watchdog backed a proposed Chicago city ordinance that would ban self-driving cars from city streets unless the federal government enacts enforceable safety standards for autonomous vehicles, the public interest group said in a Monday news release. The group said testing autonomous vehicles would be “appropriate” if adequate safeguards were in place, including a “trained human test driver” with access to a steering wheel and brake pedal. Federal policymakers “are in no position” to determine conditions and challenges on local roads, said CW, citing special dangers unique to a location including school zones and highways under construction. “If self-driving car companies want to use Chicago’s public streets as their private laboratories, then they have a responsibility to be completely transparent about what they are doing and to test according to rules that City Council sets,” said Consumer Watchdog Privacy Project Director John Simpson. Provisions of the ordinance say a self-driving vehicle being tested must have a permit from the city; the “robot” car in testing must have a trained test driver who can take over steering and braking; the testing company should be required to file public reports about any crashes; and the testing company should file public “disengagement reports” explaining instances when the robot technology failed and the test driver had to take control, CW said. It cited California regulations as a model and referenced a report from Google’s Waymo autonomous vehicle unit showing autonomous cars “had problems dealing with others on the road, construction zones and correctly perceiving their surroundings.” In the report Google said Waymo cars, which logged 635,868 miles on California’s roads in self-driving mode during 2016, saw disengagements decline from 341 to 124, or 0.8 per 1,000 miles compared with 0.2 per 1,000 miles. Most of the disengagements -- 112 -- occurred on local streets, not highways or interstates, the report said.