Waymo released updated self-reported safety data covering 271 million driverless miles through June across Atlanta, Austin, Phoenix, Los Angeles and the San Francisco-Bay Area, 50 million more miles than its previous report. The company says its robotaxis showed an 82% reduction in injury-causing crashes, 95% fewer serious-injury crashes, and sharply lower rates of pedestrian, cyclist and motorcycle injury crashes compared with human drivers.
theverge.com
· 2026-09-24
As robotaxis from multiple companies expand on public roads, firefighters, police and paramedics face a growing patchwork of different manufacturer-specific procedures, hotlines and access methods for handling incidents involving autonomous vehicles. Tesla's two-door Cybercab, which has no steering wheel and is built for full autonomy, highlights this gap since it lacks conventional controls first responders might expect to use in emergencies.
fastcompany.com
· 2026-09-21
Academics led by Eindhoven University's Pavlo Bazilinskyy are hosting an industry workshop this week focused on deterring passengers from having sex in autonomous vehicles, which lack a human driver to enforce norms. The team, drawing from systems engineering, psychology and tourism studies, is using the topic to explore broader questions about behavior and design in shared robotaxi spaces.
wired.com
· 2026-09-20
As autonomous vehicles spread, the article argues they will standardize driving behavior that has long varied dramatically by region—from aggressive New York drivers to Cairo's horn-based communication system to Jakarta's informal traffic-conductor tipping rituals. These local driving cultures, shaped by decades of human adaptation to specific urban conditions, could disappear as algorithmic driving replaces human judgment.
fastcompany.com
· 2026-09-11
A Tesla Cybercab rider in Austin, Matthew Skrzypczak, found his in-car screen glitch into a hidden interface featuring camera feeds and a touchscreen joystick for shifting the vehicle forward and reverse. He managed to close the door and honk the horn but couldn't get the car to move using the joystick, possibly due to user error. Tesla has not explained why a passenger was able to access what appears to be a feature meant for employees or emergency responders.
futurism.com
· 2026-09-09
Rivian is rolling out Autonomy+, a semiautonomous system that lets drivers enter a destination and let the SUV navigate suburban streets, traffic lights, crosswalks and stop signs on its own across the US and Canada. The feature will debut on the upcoming R2 SUV by year's end and reach existing R1S and R1T owners via over-the-air software updates, priced at $49.99 monthly or $2,500 upfront.
spectrum.ieee.org
· 2026-09-08
The Alliance for Automotive Innovation, representing major automakers, has formally asked Congress to permanently ban the sale, import and manufacture of Chinese-made cars, parts and software. CEO John Bozzella cited concerns over unfair trade practices, subsidies, IP theft and surveillance, urging lawmakers to act before the current session ends. The request aligns with existing bipartisan legislation, the Connected Vehicle Security Act of 2026, targeting vehicle tech tied to China, Russia, Iran and North Korea.
cnet.com
· 2026-09-05
Domestic auto manufacturers are lobbying the US government to prohibit the import and sale of cars produced in China. The push reflects growing concern within the industry over competition from lower-cost Chinese vehicles, particularly electric models, entering Western markets.
tech.slashdot.org
· 2026-09-04
Researchers led by Kenny et al. published in Nature a system called Concept-Wrapper Network (CW-Net) that opens up the 'black box' of autonomous vehicle decision-making. Instead of opaque outputs, CW-Net translates a car's reasoning into human-understandable concepts, such as recognizing a pedestrian or obstacle, so passengers can better anticipate its next move. Testing showed this approach improved people's ability to predict vehicle behavior even in cases where the car made errors.
nature.com
· 2026-09-02
Researchers built CW-Net, an explainable version of a black-box machine learning planner (based on the DriveIRL architecture) used to evaluate self-driving vehicle trajectories. The system was trained on two large datasets of millions of driving scenarios labeled with human-understandable concepts, allowing it to justify its trajectory choices in terms people can interpret rather than as opaque scores.
nature.com
· 2026-09-02
Waymo has started offering driverless rides to the public in San Diego, Tampa and Denver, marking its first commercial operations in Colorado, while Amazon's Zoox announced plans to begin testing its vehicles with human safety drivers in Houston and San Diego. Zoox says it will operate in 12 U.S. markets once those two cities launch, though its only paid service remains in Las Vegas.
cnbc.com
· 2026-09-01
BMW has attributed the reduction of physical buttons in its newer vehicles to changing driver preferences, particularly among younger customers who are more accustomed to touchscreen interfaces from smartphones. The automaker suggests this generational shift in expectations has influenced its interior design choices, moving controls into digital menus and touch panels.
tech.slashdot.org
· 2026-08-30
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