State Of Autonomy: July Recap

3 min readAug 1, 2017

New in-car 3D sensors will turn your family into a 1990’s after-school special, possibly starring Mark Zuckerberg.

Every month, I recap the news articles I’ve consumed around autonomous vehicles, calling out the highlights and keeping track of market projections. This is also your chance, dear readers, to nominate a topic for discussion in the following month.

The gubment is plowing ahead on AV guidance and regulation at a rate many citizens would find astounding, especially if the only legislative news on their Facebook feeds is about Obamacare.

In a 54–0 vote, the House Energy and Commerce Committee approved a bill to embrace an increasing influx of unmanned, safety standard-exempt vehicles on public roads over the next few years; the bill also aimed to block states’ authority to hamper the development of autonomous vehicles by setting their own performance standards.

One notable omission: at the behest of the Teamsters union, vehicles protected by this bill must be under a certain weight, thus granting the technology no new freedoms in the trucking industry. As I said last month, crying a river for one career at a time is not the way to make progress.

The bill goes to the broader House in September.