Comment from Henry Augenblick
Henry AugenblickOpposeIndividual
Summary: The commenter opposes the proposed action because it does not require a physical foot brake pedal for new autonomous vehicles (AVs). They argue that a manual fallback plan is essential for human safety and that AVs should be required to accommodate human drivers rather than the other way around.
Hello, I am someone who knows more than they probably should about cars, and in all my years I would have assumed we would have made better choices than what I have recently witnessed. That being said, that fact that we do not require a physical foot brake pedal for new AV's just shows how much this organization has lost sight of what really matters. I understand this has been a difficult time for the government and I get that, but you have to understand that it is no excuse to make decisions that can and will jeopardize human life. AV's themselves are a relatively new reality, and when it comes to that nothing ever starts out perfect. So the fact that we do not require a fallback plan for when the new tech concepts for this auto piloting vehicle fail is not a smart move. I understand it would be "cool" for the car to just "take care of everything", but its way to early for that to be a feasible reality, so having the option to take control when things go wrong is imperative in any situation. It's not hard to add pedals to a vehicle, it should really already come with them. We need to take baby steps when introducing a new concept to our streets and our public. It's our goal to keep human lives safe, and to be honest I wouldn't trust my life with a computer just yet, especially not in a vehicle. Every vehicle is required to abide by the standard regulations we have in place, we don't need to accommodate them, they need to accommodate us, its the law. Auto-drive should be a feature, not something as a whole, (at least not yet). In conclusion I would like to thank you for taking the time to have these comment sections for matters such as this. So I want you to imagine scenarios where you are at highway speeds and your AV just fails because it too cold or too wet for the computers, one may be screwed without a way to deescalate the situation, but you can prevent that, and isn't that what this organization is about? Who cares if it cost more, because the loss of human life is a cost no one can afford.