Will elderly and disabled gain most from autonomous cars?

The future of autonomous vehicles might give millions of elderly and disabled citizens a chance at driving, but new draft regulations released in December by the state of California point to a long battle for fully driverless cars on the road.

Google’s director of the self-driving project, Chris Urmson, said he was disappointed in the draft regulations, which state that the driver must be able to control the car at all times. This is similar to the current laws on autonomous vehicles, which Tesla have already implemented.

Google will still be able to test its vehicles on driverless mode, but a driver is still required to sit in the vehicle. That is a low blow for the company, which might have been hoping for a bit of leeway this year as it prepares to commercialize its self-driving project.

Several organized groups called for a relaxation in the laws and a way for disabled people to control autonomous cars. “If there’s an autonomous car, there needs to be a means by which a blind person can operate that car as well,” said Parnell Diggs, board member of the National Federation of the Blind to Medill.

“It would behoove the auto industry to certainly keep the elderly and the disabled in mind, as a growing proportion of the American population are aging baby boomers,” said Kenneth Jon, researcher at the Texas A&M Transportation Institute.

Autonomous cars can take down obstacles

Autonomous cars remove a lot of the issues some elderly people have in cars, like short sight and slow reactions. All of these improvements are for nought however, if regulations maintain that a driver needs to be inside the car and able to take command at all times.

Full autonomy might not come until 2020, according to Baidu, the Chinese company that is currently working on self-driving cars in Silicon Valley. Others, like Tesla, General Motors, and the PSA Group have similar predictions on when the market will be ready for driverless cars.

Until then, it looks like we’re stuck with highway self-driving and self-parking features coming to more cars.

Baidu building a self-driving team in Silicon Valley

The Chinese web search giant Baidu is looking to expand its autonomous car program to the United States by bringing a 100-person team to Silicon Valley. This puts it in the same space – and now, same neighborhood – as its closest American equivalent, Google.

Baidu isn’t a household name here in the United States, but in China, it is the go-to search engine for over 80% of its 1.35 billion citizens. It was also the first Chinese company to be listed on the NASDAQ-100 index, making it an easy company to compare to Google.

Like Google, Baidu has been branching out in recent years to social networking, mobile operating systems, and even self-driving cars.

Baidu says the Silicon Valley team will be known as Autonomous Driving Unit-US, or ADU-US. It will focus on areas integral to self-driving car development, including planning, perception, control and systems. ADU-US will work alongside Baidu’s existing Silicon Valley-based teams, including Baidu Research.

Earlier this month, Tesla opened its doors to receive pre-orders for its yet-to-be-unveiled Model 3. It received over 325,000 pro-orders – many of which were made sight unseen – in just a few days. One of the primary drivers of interest in this vehicle was Tesla’s self-driving mode that enables you to take your hands off the wheel and enjoy the ride while the car changes lanes, turns, and navigates you to where you want to go.

With interest in autonomous vehicles this high, it’s no surprise that Baidu has decided to jump in and develop its own platform that it can then partner with manufacturers like BMW to bring to market.

“Baidu is fully committed to making self-driving cars a reality,” said Jing Wang, SVP of Baidu and General Manager of Baidu’s Autonomous Driving Unit. “Autonomous vehicles will save lives and make transportation more efficient. Baidu’s Silicon Valley car team will play a significant role in building the car of the future.”