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Opinion

A Blurred Line: AV Capability and Human Responsibility

Drivers left holding the bag as autonomous vehicles fail to live up to automakers' hype. Trade secrets are in, transparency is out.
what autonomous vehicles see
What an AV sees (Source: Mobileye)

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By Junko Yoshida 

We know that humans and machines can coexist. They’ve been doing it for centuries. But the key to this harmony is knowing what machines can—or can’t — do, and defining the human role in this equation.

In the world of autonomous driving, I see society teetering above a slippery slope. On the one hand, transparency about AV capabilities is decreasing. A California Superior Court ruling last week allows Waymo to treat certain safety-related crash data as trade secrets. On the other hand, human drivers are growing both more complacent and more confused about their responsibilities in highly but not fully automated vehicles.


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