Full Driving Engagement Optional

February 6th, 2024
cars, tech
Yesterday the Secretary of Transportation wrote:

ALL advanced driver assistance systems available today require the human driver to be in control and fully engaged in the driving task at all times.

While the driver who prompted this was extremely reckless, driving while wearing a 3D headset (video), Buttigieg is wrong here.

Advanced driver assistance systems can cover a range of things, from anti-lock brakes to adaptive cruise control and up. For the last several months, however, Americans have been able to buy Mercedes vehicles equipped with the Level 3 Drive Pilot which, under very specific circumstances [1], do not require the person in the driver seat to be engaged in the task of driving. Instead they can legally (and, according to Mercedes, safely) read, play games, or watch videos, as long as they're prepared to retake control of the vehicle with ten seconds of notice.

Now, this is really a minor caveat, and even if you were in a car with Drive Pilot you couldn't safely wear a headset. But this also seems like a situation where the Secretary of Transportation should be up to date on technological and regulatory advancements.


[1] On specific highways in CA and NV, in traffic that limits speeds to under 40mph, during the day, in good weather, etc.

Comment via: facebook, lesswrong, mastodon

Recent posts on blogs I like:

Jealousy In Polyamory Isn't A Big Problem And I'm Tired Of Being Gaslit By Big Self-Help

The nuance is in the post, guys

via Thing of Things July 18, 2024

Trust as a bottleneck to growing teams quickly

non-trust is reasonable • trust lets collaboration scale • symptoms of trust deficit • how to proactively build trust

via benkuhn.net July 13, 2024

Coaching kids as they learn to climb

Helping kids learn to climb things that are at the edge of their ability The post Coaching kids as they learn to climb appeared first on Otherwise.

via Otherwise July 10, 2024

more     (via openring)