Google joined forces with Ford and Uber


04/27/2016

Yesterday, Google, Ford, Volvo, Uber and Lyft announced creation of an alliance, which aims to promote self-driving cars in the USA. Within the union, these companies will cooperate with federal regulators and the public to create uniform rules for the operation of such vehicles, and their output more rapid on a public road.



Saad Faruque
A statement of the alliance called ‘Self-Driving Coalition for Safer Streets’ states that "the companies-founders in the name of Ford, Google, Lyft, Uber and Volvo Cars have created a coalition to work with legislators, regulators and the public to enable them to realize all the benefits of self-transport means." The coalition sees one of its main tasks in the work with community organizations, municipal authorities and representatives of the business, so that they "could imagine what use of such cars" would bring on the US public roads.

The official representative of the coalition will be David Strickland, who was a manager of the National Transportation Safety Management USA (NHTSA) in 2010-2014. "Self-driving car technologies will help make US roads safer and less congested. The best way to promote innovation is to have a uniform and clear set of federal standards, - said Mr. Strickland. – The coalition will work with the authorities to find optimal solutions, thanks to which use of self-driving car will become possible." According to the alliance, the US Department of Transportation forecasts that self-governing cars can significantly relieve traffic on the roads and reduce the number of accidents. As a result of road accidents, about 33 thousand people were killed in the US last year. 94% of the accidents were caused by human error. At that, car accidents are one of the main causes of death among young people aged 15 to 29 years in the United States. "The world will eventually realize that autonomous vehicles will be the main way to travel" - said the director of mobile taxi service Lyft Taggart Matthiesen in the statement. 

Currently a tendency to create regional rules governing certain aspects of the use of autonomous vehicles is emerging in the US. For example, California authorities have proposed to prohibit the use of self-driving vehicles, if they do not have the steering wheel, pedals, and the passenger is a man without a driver's license. The authorities justified this by saying that otherwise the people would not be able to intervene in the car’s driving in case of emergency. Google, in turn, has opposed such a ban, arguing that it is contrary to the whole idea of the self-driving car. Against the background of the current debate, NHTSA’s management has already stated that the regulators and the authorities should avoid "piecemeal" regulation of the use of self-service whenever possible.

source: usatoday.com