Day: September 12, 2017

The Trump administration is updating safety guidelines for self-driving cars in an attempt to clear barriers for automakers and tech companies who want to get test vehicles on the road.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao announced the new voluntary guidelines Tuesday during a visit to an autonomous vehicle testing facility at the University of Michigan.

The new guidelines update policies issued last fall by the Obama administration, which were also largely voluntary. Under Obama, automakers were asked to follow a 15-point safety assessment before putting test vehicles on the road. The new guidelines reduce that to a 12-point voluntary assessment and no longer require automakers to consider ethical or privacy issues.

The guidelines also make clear that the federal government, not states, determines whether autonomous vehicles are safe. That is the same guidance the Obama administration gave.

Chao emphasized that the guidelines aren’t meant to force automakers to use certain technology or meet stringent requirements; instead, they’re designed to clarify what autonomous vehicle developers should be considering before they put test cars on the road.

“This is a guidance document,” Chao said. “We want to make sure those who are involved understand how important safety is. We also want to ensure that the innovation and the creativity of our country remain.”

Not a ‘vision for safety’

But critics say the voluntary nature of the guidelines gives the government no authority to prevent dangerous experimental vehicles.

“This isn’t a vision for safety,” said John M. Simpson, head of privacy for a nonprofit progressive group called Consumer Watchdog. “It’s a road map that allows manufacturers to do whatever they want, wherever and whenever they want, turning our roads into private laboratories for robot cars with no regard for our safety.”

Regulators and lawmakers have been struggling to keep up with the pace of self-driving technology. They are wary of burdening automakers and tech companies with regulations that would slow innovation, but they need to ensure that the vehicles are safely deployed. There are no fully self-driving vehicles for sale, but autonomous cars with backup drivers are being tested in numerous states, including California, Nevada and Pennsylvania.

Autonomous vehicle developers, including automakers and tech companies like Google and Uber, say autonomous vehicles could dramatically reduce crashes but complain that the patchwork of state laws passed in recent years could hamper their deployment. Early estimates indicate there were more than 40,000 traffic fatalities in the U.S. last year; the government says 94 percent of crashes involve human error.

But safety advocates say that experimental cars could get on public roads too soon, and accidents could undermine public acceptance of the technology.

Broad safety goals

The new guidelines encourage companies to have processes in place for broad safety goals, such as making sure drivers are paying attention while using advanced assist systems. The systems are expected to detect and respond to people and objects both in and out of its travel path, “including pedestrians, bicyclists, animals and objects that could affect safe operation of the vehicle,” the guidelines say.

Chao said the guidelines will be updated again next year.

“The technology in this field is accelerating at a much faster pace than I think many people expected,” she said. “We want to make sure stakeholders who are developing this have the best information.”

Chao’s appearance came at a time of increased government focus on highly automated cars.

Earlier Tuesday, the National Transportation Safety Board was debating whether Tesla Inc.’s partially self-driving Autopilot system shared the blame for the 2016 death of a driver in Florida. The board ultimately said the driver’s inattention and a truck driver who made a left-hand turn in front of the Tesla were at fault for the crash, but it said automakers should incorporate safeguards that limit the use of automated vehicle control systems so drivers don’t rely on them too much.

Last week, the U.S. House voted to give the federal government the authority to exempt automakers from safety standards that don’t apply to the technology. If a company can prove it can make a safe vehicle with no steering wheel, for example, the federal government could approve that. The bill permits the deployment of up to 25,000 vehicles in its first year and 100,000 annually after that.

The Senate is now considering a similar bill.
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Apple on Tuesday will unveil the new model of its popular iPhone, 10 years after then-CEO Steve Jobs showed the world the iPhone for the first time.

Leaks of the iPhone’s design suggest it will feature a higher resolution display, wireless charging and facial recognition technology, among other improvements.

The event Tuesday will take place at Apple’s “spaceship” office in California, though few actual details about the iPhone release are publicly available.

Predictions for the new high-end model, likely to be called the iPhone X, put the price around the $900 point, with some estimates reaching above $1,000. The previous iPhone 7 Plus sold for a top base price of $769.

Brian Blau, an Apple analyst at Gartner, told Reuters the steep price is driven by the need for more advanced parts, like 3D sensors and memory capacity.

“Some of these components are just darned expensive,” he said. “There is just no doubt about that.”

Apple has sold more than 1.2 billion iPhones since it first released the phone a decade ago, but the company took a huge hit to its revenue last year as many customers did not buy an iPhone 7 because they saw it as too similar to the iPhone 6.

With the release of its new phone, Apple hopes to recapture some of the early excitement surrounding its phones and convince critics the company is still on the cutting edge of tech innovation.

Apple is also expected to introduce a big upgrade to its Apple Watch and a higher-definition model of its Apple TV system, which allows users to stream online content.
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Apple released the latest in smartphone technology Tuesday — the $1,000 iPhone X (the X stands for the number 10, not the letter X) — a gadget Apple calls the new generation of mobile communication.

Apple CEO Tim Cook unveiled the new phone at the first event to be staged at the Steve Jobs Theater — named for the late Apple founder who introduced the iPhone 10 years ago.

“Ten years later, it is only fitting that we are here in this place, on this day, to reveal a product that will set the path for technology for the next decade,” Cook said.

Among its many features, the new iPhone can shoot better photographs in low light and has wireless recharging. Perhaps its most unique new feature: The new phone can be unlocked by facial recognition.

But the big question is, will consumers hand over $1,000 for a fancy, feature-laden telephone?

“Just because you’re unhappy with your phone, just because it seems to not be working, doesn’t necessarily mean that you absolutely need that shiny new thing,” Mark Hamrick, a senior analyst with Bankrate.com, tells VOA.

But Hamrick says he believes Apple did a very good job with innovation along with the hardware and software that went into the iPhone X. He says there will always be a market for it, despite the high price tag.

“I think, truly, that there are some people out there who will skip meals to have these devices. We can debate whether that’s wise or not. … What we’re really talking about is not paying cash for these devices, but looking at the monthly payment,” Hamrick said.

Apple has sold more than 1.2 billion iPhones since it released its first one in 2007. The company is looking to the iPhone X to revive its sagging market share as other companies grab a piece of the multibillion-dollar industry.

Also Tuesday, Apple introduced major upgrades to its TV streaming device and to the Apple Watch, including an ability to detect an elevated heart rate when the user is inactive.
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Worried relatives, generous volunteers, frantic neighbors, even medical providers are turning to social media now that Hurricane Irma wiped out electricity and cell service to communities across Florida, cutting off most contact with remote islands in the Keys.

“We all sort of scattered around the country when we evacuated, so we’re trying to stay in touch, by phone, by Facebook, however we can,” said Suzanne Trottier, who left her Key West, Florida home for Virginia almost a week ago as the hurricane approached. “Unfortunately we’ve been really, really looking on Facebook a lot because I have people down there I haven’t heard from,” she said.

One of those posts Monday morning brought a bit of good cheer: a photo of a friend who had stayed behind, smiling, healthy and dry.

“Such great news” posted Trottier’s husband Neil Renouf, adding a thumbs up.

But many questions remain about the situation on the Florida Keys.

Irma’s eye slammed into the island chain with potentially catastrophic 130 p.m. early Sunday morning, and more than 24 hours later, friends and family still couldn’t contact people who were riding out the storm. Search and rescue teams were going door-to-door.

Facebook groups were still forming Monday to help from afar. Evacuees Of The Keys members shared school closure notices, videos of destruction, and many posts from friends and relatives searching for loved ones.

Leah McNally of Fort Lauderdale, whose mother stayed behind at her home in Tavernier, on Key Largo, was relaying information onto Facebook that she heard through a walkie talkie app, Zello, which has been widely used during both Harvey and Irma.

“Everything is like a black hole right now but there are people in the keys who are relaying information,” she said.

Zello was relaying calls for help, and a team of unofficial dispatchers ran rescue operations to hundreds of locations, warning boaters to stay out of the water due to alligators and snakes.

Facebook activated its Safety Check feature for people to let friends and family know they’re safe. Facebook spokesman Eric Porterfield said that by Monday morning, there were already more than 600 posts asking for help, mostly fuel, shelter or a ride, although one woman with broken ribs sought medical advice.

There were also more than 2,000 postings offering help, including free housing, clothes and people with chainsaws volunteering for cleanup. Facebook community fundraisers had already been launched; a woman in France had already collected $12,000 for recovery supplies in St. Barts.

Social media has been a game-changer for Americans coping with natural disasters, Fordham University communications professor Paul Levinson said.

“In the past, when power went out, the best anyone could do when a hurricane hit was turn on the battery-operated transistor radio,” he said. This helped, but didn’t provide detailed information about loved ones that pops up on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.

“As long as the phones are charged, you can find out almost instantly that people in the danger zone are doing OK,” he said.

Thus phone charging has become an act of near desperation in some shelters as evacuees tried to plug in to generator power.

Some of the online contacts have been truly critical. DaVita Kidney Care, whose patients receive life-saving dialysis three times a week, for four hours per day, was using Twitter and Facebook, along with a blog to inform patients about open centers and hospitals.

“We hope that through our social media outreach patients know they can go to any dialysis center to get care,” said spokeswoman Kate Stabrawa for the Denver-based company.

People engaging with Irma from well beyond the danger zone use social media “like huddling together during bad times,” said public relations expert Richard Laermer, author of “Trendspotting.”

“Social media makes people feel like they are doing something, as opposed to nothing,” he said.
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State-sponsored hacks have become an increasing worry among countries across the Persian Gulf. They include suspected Iranian cyberattacks on Saudi Arabia to leaked emails causing consternation among nominally allied Arab nations.

Defending against such attacks have become a major industry in Dubai, as the city-state home to the world’s tallest building and the long-haul airline Emirates increasingly bills itself as an interconnected “smart city” where robots now deliver wedding certificates.

They fear a massive attack on the scale of what Saudi Arabia suffered through in 2012 with Shamoon, a computer virus that destroyed systems of the kingdom’s state-run oil company.

This was the topic of an event Tuesday in Dubai organized by FireEye Inc., a cybersecurity firm headquartered in Milpitas, California. Emirati officials and businessmen attended the meeting.
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U.S. Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao will unveil on Tuesday streamlined safety guidelines for automakers that want to deploy self-driving vehicles, a person briefed on the matter said Monday, as members of Congress push their own proposals to remove regulatory barriers to the technology.

The new Transportation Department policy is expected to offer the lighter regulatory touch that automakers have pushed for. For example, the Transportation Department is expected to state that automakers do not have to seek approval from regulators before putting self-driving vehicles on the road.

Separately, the National Transportation Safety Board on Tuesday is expected to release findings that Tesla Inc.’s semi-autonomous Autopilot mode was a contributing factor in the May 2016 death of a motorist. That case has highlighted concerns about the design of systems that automate some, but not all, driving tasks.

The new document is titled “A Vision for Safety” and will be less than half the length of the Obama administration guidelines released in September 2016 and will be less “burdensome,” the person briefed on the announcement said.

Chao is expected to make the announcement in Ann Arbor at a self-driving testing facility.

The Transportation Department is releasing its voluntary safety standards at the same time a bipartisan coalition in Congress is moving forward on legislation also designed to speed commercialization of self-driving cars without human controls and bar states from blocking their deployment.

On Wednesday, the U.S. House of Representatives voted unanimously on a measure to clear legal obstacles that could discourage automakers and technology companies from putting self-driving cars into broader use.

The House measure would allow automakers to field up to 25,000 vehicles without meeting existing auto safety standards in the first year. Over three years, the cap would rise to 100,000 vehicles annually. Automakers would be required to provide regulators with safety assessments of their systems, but would not have to get federal approval to put autonomous cars on the road.

A group of senators introduced a similar draft bill on Friday.

In September 2016, the Obama administration proposed that automakers voluntarily submit details of self-driving vehicle systems in a 15-point “safety assessment”and urged states to defer to the federal government on most vehicle regulations.

An auto trade group representing General Motors Co., Volkswagen AG, Toyota Motor Corp. and others, objected to the Obama administration proposal.
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