It’s been over a year since the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration had someone officially running the show. While plenty of political appointments have been held up by Senate approval, the NHTSA is one President Trump has neglected since taking office. Former General Electric executive Heidi King has been the Deputy Administrator since September, and will be the one Trump taps to assume overall leadership of the agency. It’s about time.

The NHTSA has to cope with the planned fuel efficiency changes, oversee the neverending Takata airbag recalls, and start doing some damage control with autonomous vehicle development. While the recall issues are likely to remain business as usual, the current administration has pursued lax standards for both autonomous safety and corporate efficiency rules — and both have seen growing opposition.

Entire states are already pushing back against the proposed fuel efficiency rollbacks and there have been two fatalities involving self-driving and semi-autonomous technology within the last month. Because of this, promoting King might be a wise choice. Her corporate ties have some people concerned she’ll go easy on businesses, but at least she already has some experience in dealing with the big issues.  (Read More…)

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) has released new ratings for seven small utility vehicles. For the most part, the pint-sized crossovers performed amicably. However, none of the models were worthy of the group’s coveted “Top Safety Pick Plus” award due to subpar headlamp performance, while a couple of models were found structurally deficient after being confronted with the dreaded small overlap crash test.

Ford’s Escape received an overall poor rating and came away from the test with the worst structural deformation within the group. Senior IIHS research engineer Becky Muller noted that Ford reinforced the diver’s side of the vehicle for the 2017 model year but negated extending that courtesy to passengers.

“Disparities like this one are why we decided to formally rate the passenger side in the small overlap test after five years of evaluating only the driver side,” she explained. “Manufacturers shouldn’t shortchange protection for front-seat passengers.” (Read More…)

We all play amateur detective whenever a Tesla crashes or does something wonky while operating on Autopilot (or in its absence), and last week was no exception.

The death of Wei Huang following his Model X’s collision with a lane divider on California’s US-101 freeway in Mountain View prompted Tesla to issue two statements concerning the incident. In the second, the automaker admitted, after retrieving digital logs from the vehicle, that the vehicle was in Autopilot mode and that the driver did not touch the wheel in the six seconds leading up to the March 23rd impact.

Retracing the last few hundred yards of Huang’s journey on Google Streetview led this author to make a very obvious observation: that the paint marking the left-side boundary of the lane Huang was presumably driving in was faded and half missing as it approached the barrier. As it turns out, the condition of that not-so-solid white line caused another Tesla’s Autopilot to act strangely, but this time the driver corrected in time. He also has a video to show what happened. (Read More…)

While the investigation into Tesla’s most recent Autopilot-rated fatality continues, Waymo chimed in to remind everyone that the company’s self-driving system isn’t actually self-driving at all. That almost makes it sound like the Google offshoot is coming to the defense of Tesla Motors. However, the truth of the matter is this was a golden opportunity for Waymo to sneak in another humblebrag that its autonomous technology is the genuine article and that most of its competitors are playing catch-up.

It’s a valid point. We shouldn’t forget that Tesla’s Autopilot is not representative of true autonomy and the burden of safety still falls squarely on the driver. But the manufacturer didn’t always market it that way, and only updated the system to require hands on the wheel after the first fatality. This incident is different from the recent Uber crash in Tempe, Arizona. But just how different is debatable and largely dependent on what qualifies as “self-driving” to the average person.

“Tesla has driver-assist technology and that’s very different from our approach,” explained Waymo CEO John Krafcik last week, before Tesla revealed that Autopilot was engaged during the Model X crash. “If there’s an accident in a Tesla, the human in the driver’s seat is ultimately responsible for paying attention. We don’t know what happened here, but there was no self-driving.” (Read More…)

The National Transportation Safety Board is one of two federal agencies probing the recent fatal Tesla Model X crash in Mountain View, California, and it isn’t too pleased with the automaker for releasing information gathered from the car’s digital log.

Apple engineer Wei Huang died after his Model X slammed into a concrete barrier on the southbound US-101 freeway on March 23rd. The vehicle was operating in Autopilot mode, the company revealed days later. Accompanying Tesla’s blog post were details about the events leading up to the impact, including the claim that Huang didn’t have his hands on the wheel during the six seconds leading up to the crash.

This data release didn’t sit well with the NTSB. (Read More…)

Buried in the hubbub surrounding this week’s New York auto show was a drama unfolding in the wake of a Tesla Model X crash on US-101 in Mountain View, California, not far from Tesla’s Palo Alto HQ.

The SUV, driven by 38-year-old Apple software engineer Wei Huang, collided head-on with a concrete divider where the southbound freeway splits at the Highway 85 junction. The collision obliterated the SUV to the A-pillars and sparked a fire. Huang later died in hospital.

Crashes occur for a myriad of reasons and Teslas aren’t immune to reckless drivers, medical emergencies, and any number of other conditions that can lead to a crash. However, at the time of impact, Huang’s vehicle was operating on Autopilot, the company announced. (Read More…)

It’s 11:40 a.m. Do you know how large your Camry’s pistons are?

Odds are you don’t, and Toyota isn’t sure it knows, either. That’s why the automaker has issued a small but relatively unusual recall for 1,730 Camrys from the 2018 model year. The issue lies with the installation of pistons built to an incorrect specification.

Essentially, they’re too big for their britches. (Read More…)

Tesla’s once sky-high share price has taken a serious hit in recent days, so news of the electric automaker’s recall of 123,000 Model S vehicles couldn’t have come at a worse time.

Describing the recall as voluntary, Tesla sent emails to owners of all Model S electric cars built before April 2016 to warn of an issue affecting the car’s power steering system. The issue involves corrosion impacting the bolts holding the power steering motor to the rack, which can then shear off — leading to a loss of power steering.  (Read More…)

Ever since last week’s  fatal accident, in which an autonomous test vehicle from Uber struck a pedestrian in Tempe, Arizona, it seems like the whole world has united against the company. While the condemnation is not undeserved, there appears to be an emphasis on casting the blame in a singular direction to ensure nobody else gets caught up in the net of outrage. But it’s important to remember that, while Uber has routinely displayed a lack of interest in pursuing safety as a priority, all autonomous tech firms are being held to the same low standards imposed by both local and federal governments.

Last week, lidar supplier Velodyne said Uber’s failure was most likely on the software end as it defended the effectiveness of its hardware. Since then, Aptiv — the supplier for the Volvo XC90’s radar and camera — claimed Uber disabled the SUV’s standard crash avoidance systems to implement its own. This was followed up by Arizona Governor Doug Ducey issuing a suspension on all autonomous testing from Uber on Monday — one week after the incident and Uber’s self-imposed suspension.  (Read More…)

Parts supplier Velodyne Lidar Inc. has come out against Uber Technologies following the release of video footage showing one if its autonomous test vehicles fatally striking an Arizona woman this week. Marta Thoma Hall, president of Velodyne, said she was confused as to why the autonomous SUV failed to see 49-year-old Elaine Herzberg crossing the street.

Velodyne, which supplies autonomous sensing equipment to many of the world’s automotive and tech firms (including Uber), is currently cooperating with federal investigators to determine what happened in Tempe, Arizona, on Sunday evening.  (Read More…)

It’s a problem — one I’m sure you’ve witnessed. A hapless driver, plodding along a darkened highway with no taillights illuminated, mistakenly thinking their lights are on thanks to a bright dashboard and flaccid daytime running lights.

High on poutine and maple syrup, Transport Canada is having no more of it, announcing a new mandate requiring all new cars sold in the Great White North to have extra illumination starting in 2021.

The initiative also proves that someone within the Canadian government has a sense of humour, as Transport Canada says they’re going “ghostbusting to target phantom vehicles.” Break out the ECTO-1!

(Read More…)

On Wednesday evening, the Tempe Police Department released a video documenting the final moments before an Uber-owned autonomous test vehicle fatally struck a woman earlier this week. The public response has been varied. Many people agree with Tempe Police Chief Sylvia Moir that the accident was unavoidable, while others accusing Uber of vehicular homicide. The media take has been somewhat more nuanced.

One thing is very clear, however — the average person still does not understand how this technology works in the slightest. While the darkened video (provided below) does seem to support claims that the victim appeared suddenly, other claims — that it is enough to exonerate Uber — are mistaken. The victim, Elaine Herzberg, does indeed cross directly into the path of the oncoming Volvo XC90 and is visible for a fleeting moment before the strike, but the vehicle’s lidar system should have seen her well before that. Any claims to the contrary are irresponsible.  (Read More…)

Details are trickling in about the fatal incident in Tempe, Arizona, where an autonomous Uber collided with a pedestrian earlier this week. While a true assessment of the situation is ongoing, the city’s police department seems ready to absolve the company of any wrongdoing.

“The driver said it was like a flash, the person walked out in front of them,” explained Tempe police chief Sylvia Moir. “His first alert to the collision was the sound of the collision.”

This claim leaves us with more questions than answers. Research suggests autonomous driving aids lull people into complacency, dulling the senses and slowing reaction times. But most self-driving hardware, including Uber’s, uses lidar that can functionally see in pitch black conditions. Even if the driver could not see the woman crossing the street (there were streetlights), the vehicle should have picked her out clear as day. (Read More…)

In the evening hours of March 18th, a pedestrian was fatally struck by a self-driving vehicle in Tempe, Arizona. While we all knew this was an inevitability, many expected the first casualty of progress to be later in the autonomous development timeline. The vehicle in question was owned by Uber Technologies and the company has admitted it was operating autonomously at the time of the incident.

The company has since halted all testing in the Pittsburgh, San Francisco, Toronto, and greater Phoenix areas.

If you’re wondering what happened, so is Uber. The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has opened an investigation into the accident and is sending a team to Tempe. Uber says it is cooperating with authorities. (Read More…)

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has opened a probe into two older-model Kia and Hyundai vehicles in the wake of six head-on collisions, hoping to discover why the vehicles’ airbags failed to deploy.

Included in the investigation is the 2011 Hyundai Sonata and Kia Fortes from the 2012 and 2013 model years. The collisions reported by the safety agency resulted in four deaths and six injuries. (Read More…)