ALSO| Waymo files voluntary software recall over flooded-lane risks on high-speed roads<\/a><\/p>\nKEYE<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
One of the incidents of ignoring police direction happened during the mass shooting on West Sixth Street back in March, when three people died, and 15 others were injured.<\/p>\n
Austin Police Association President Michael Bullock said autonomous vehicles can struggle in unusual situations. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt didn’t impede on anything in the moment, but it’s not necessarily uncommon where these vehicles don’t quite know how to deal with these one-off scenarios,\u201d Bullock said.<\/p>\n
The new law requires autonomous vehicle companies to be authorized by the state, to provide an emergency response plan for law enforcement, and to participate in a public-facing portal that allows the public to verify operators and submit safety complaints.<\/p>\n
Kara Kockelman, a professor of transportation and engineering at the University of Texas at Austin, welcomed the added oversight. <\/p>\n
\u201cI’m glad that the state is taking this a bit more seriously now,” she said. “It’s important not to just let others slip in without kind of meeting those basic minimums.”<\/p>\n
Bullock said the emergency planning requirement may not make a major difference in fast-moving situations. Asked how impactful it is to have a fully laid out emergency response plan, Bullock said, \u201cThese plans are great, but it takes time to work through all of those versus the immediacy of having someone behind the wheel.\u201d<\/p>\n
The four autonomous vehicle companies operating in Austin \u2014 Waymo, Zoox, AV-Ride, and Tesla \u2014 are all state-authorized.<\/p>\n
The Texas DMV said an autonomous vehicle company can lose its authorization to operate in Texas if the agency deems the vehicles are operating in a way that endangers public safety.<\/p>\n
Waymo was contacted for comment, but had not responded.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"AUSTIN, Texas \u2014 Self-driving cars have become a common sight on Austin streets, but a new Texas law…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":320311,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[27,29,28],"class_list":["post-320310","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320310","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=320310"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320310\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/320311"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=320310"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=320310"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=320310"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}