Shouldn't they have investigated that before it was allowed to operate?

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is updating vehicle standards to make it easier and faster for driverless cars to deploy on public roads. It’s currently tweaking eight rules, including those requiring car parts that driverless cars don’t really need: brake pedals, windshield wipers, and rearview mirrors. But for now, years-old standards remain in place.

Beyond private companies using tax dollars to manage their special regulatory environment, privatize and monetize public roads, and test their unfinished and unregulated products on citizens, I expect these to be fully-equipped roving surveillance and oppression machines:

• Each car can be covertly equipped with a suite of LPR or facial recognition cameras, sensors, and signals intelligence equipment.

• Autonomous cars can patrol and surveil large areas to gather intelligence while acting as innocuous taxis.

• Journalists, brown people, or pregnant woman making the mistake of entering one of these could simply be recognized and driven to a “detention” center for arrest.

• Vehicles can autonomously work in tandem to hunt down and assault other vehicles, or serve as transport for domestic military operations, or blockade roads.

• Service can be selectively denied to certain areas or social groups to curtail and manage movement during protests or events.

I mean, just use your imagination as to how an authoritarian federal government could collude with a Fascist tech CEO to leverage a large autonomous robo-taxi fleet set upon the population:

As if I needed another reason to not not drive to/in Texas

Still looks right out of Omikron: The Nomad Soul. Down to the gold color in the desert zone. Sliders are literally self driving taxis you can call.

This man has no original ideas. We knew that already though.

Oh awesome. They don’t have steering or pedals so when the cloud service fails in 5 years, the entire car will be complete e-waste.

whether it meets federal safety standards.

I'm just gonna throw out a wild guess: NO.

The fuck... It's for two people?

Hey I just saw one of those this morning and didn’t know what it was. Also looked like it was crab walking down the highway.

Wait wait wait.. THATS WHAT THESE ARE??? I’ve seen these on the roads for maybe 4+ months now and always wondered what these ugly fucking Mac Mouse as looking cars are as there’s no branding on them, and it turns out their Teslas??? Fucking of course.

"Before you ride today, Elon needs to know a little bit about your voting history."

Fugly pieces of shit, like everything connected to Nazi cunts. It would be a real shame if all those coal rolling fuckheads were to target these things and run them off the road. A real shame.

I like how they only have 2 seats. Whenever I take a cab, I'm looking to have 1 seat for me and maybe 1 other person. I don't ever want to take my kids or friends with me. More braindead bullshit from the dipshit fascist.

Oh? Elon got from the edgy to the fancy phase?

TBF it's not "already under investigation" as if something bad already happened. It and other robo-cabs are being evaluated by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration for conformance to new safety standards designed to accommodate self-driving cars - such as not requiring them to have steering wheels or brake pedals.

they look like they are perfect for stickers

I'd still like my autonomous cab to have windshield wipers. I'll feel better.

You just know imma be pulling up in front of these things and slowing waaay down.

Is it painted gold because that's Trump's favorite color?

Vehicles don't have to be tested before going on the road? Do they just issue license plates to any new car model?

I saw one speeding (10 over the limit) on the Interstate in Kansas City. Had a California plate, but I’m assuming it came from Austin?

No fucking way, I’m getting into one of those death traps and then letting it drive me across country.

On the surface, this could be entirely legit, not worth the outrage.

I can easily believe

• regulations are not ready for self-driving vehicles
• a manufacturer decided some required equipment is not suited for a car meant to be self-driving only
• the manufacturer self-certified, with exemptions where there is no regulatory framework yet.
• government agency sees that and starts an investigation to see if they agree

Even before you get into what you think of this specific manufacturer and whether they’re really ready for self-driving, this is a “normal” process

I’m more worried about regulations defining what self driving needs to be capable of and tests to qualify it

Whether a cyberCab is capable of safely self-driving is a different question from whether a self-driving vehicle is required to have a steering wheel