American authorities intend to scrutinise self-driving technologies more closely. This was stated by the new head of the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), Steven Cliff, AP reports.
According to him, tighter oversight of automated vehicles is necessary to establish rules that protect drivers, passengers and pedestrians.
Cliff said he was surprised by the lack of data at NHTSA on crashes involving autonomous vehicles. Upon taking office, he initiated the preparation of a corresponding report.
As a result, it turned out that from 1 July 2021 to 15 May 2022 automated vehicles were involved in nearly 400 crashes.
Cliff believes that the industry needs federal safety standards. However, on this issue he added, it is necessary to avoid haste.
“Each time we draft rules, we must define not only standards for the technology, but also an objective way to measure system performance to ensure compliance with the requirements,” said Cliff.
In particular, the agency is working on performance standards for automatic emergency braking, which is planned to be implemented for all new cars and trucks.
Cliff added that integrating such technologies that detect pedestrians and obstacles would reduce fatalities on American roads. He did not provide other details about the new rules.
Also, Cliff commented on the report about crashes involving autonomous vehicles. He said that despite Tesla’s leadership in the number of accidents, it is still early to draw any conclusions.
The head of the agency said that the company uses driver-assistance technology on almost all of its roughly 830,000 vehicles on U.S. roads. This makes precise comparisons with other manufacturers difficult, the official added.
Cliff also said that Tesla is actively cooperating with the agency:
“I think we are working well with them […]. When we identified that risks exist, they took action, and that was appropriate.”
As reported in June, the NHTSA continued its investigation into Tesla, launching the ‘engineering analysis’ phase.
In November 2021, Elon Musk’s company recalled nearly 12,000 vehicles due to a software glitch in the emergency braking system.
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