driverless cars News

DOT: Better Metrics Needed to Prove Autonomous Car Safety

Autonomous vehicle manufacturers need a better yardstick to show that their products are safe, said Derek Kan, under secretary for policy at the U.S. Department of Transportation. The metrics that are most widely used by self-driving car developers – miles …

Impact of Driverless Cars on Insurance Not as Dire as Predicted

It turns out robots need insurance too. As driverless vehicles reduce car ownership in coming years, insurers may not face the Armageddon that had been predicted, new research shows. “We do not expect revenues for auto insurance companies to experience …

Carmakers Struggle to Keep Driver Engaged Even When on Autopilot

After partially faulting Tesla Inc.’s automation system for a 2016 fatal crash, U.S. safety investigators last year called on carmakers to do more to ensure drivers stay engaged as next-generation cars start to steer themselves. Since then, the National Transportation …

Senator Wants More Safeguards for Self-Driving Cars

U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, who took a firsthand look at self-driving vehicle technology on Tuesday, said it was frightening to see “no hands on the wheel” as his car approached a parked car and called for more safeguards to be …

Solar Storms Are Driverless Cars’ Cosmic Weakness

Self-driving cars are still working to master the snow. It turns out that excessive sun can also pose a problem for the coming wave of robot drivers. The threat comes from solar storms, those occasional eruptions of vast amounts of …

Self-Driving Cars Will Eliminate Things You Love and Hate

Electric cars, robo taxis and self-driving trucks are coming to change the society we live in—possibly sooner than you think. Limited tests of driverless cars are already happening today and they’ll be in use everywhere within six years, according to …

Report: London Not Ready for Driverless Cars Before 2030s

London is ill-prepared to become an early adopter of cutting-edge transport technology including driverless cars and retail deliveries by drone, according to the city’s lawmakers. While the U.K. government has predicted that connected and autonomous vehicles, or CAVs, will be …

U.S. Drivers Begin to Warm up to Riding in Self-Driving Cars

American drivers are slowly warming up to the idea of relinquishing the wheel to a robot. Although 63 percent of U.S. drivers say they’d be afraid to ride in a fully self-driving car, that’s down substantially from the 78 percent …

CES Roundup: Robocar of the Future May Take Longer Than You Think

Carmakers and tech companies have fallen over one another in recent weeks to show the strides they’ve made with self-driving cars. At CES – usually a stage for bragging about futuristic bona fides – top executives are instead tamping down …

Rural Minnesota Towns Consider Driverless Car Technology

A transportation researcher says rural Minnesota residents could benefit from driverless cars. Frank Douma from the University of Minnesota created a task force last year to examine how to give residents across the state access to self-driving vehicles, Minnesota Public …