Image courtesy of Kyle Field.
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The New Jersey legislature is considering a bill known as S1677 proposed by Senators Andrew Zwicker and Gordon Johnson that would allow manufacturers to test fully autonomous vehicles — otherwise known as robotaxis — within the state, provided they comply with a number of specific requirements. It mandates coordination with the state police and the attorney general’s office so that authorities are fully informed about where and when the testing of autonomous vehicles is taking place. It also requires the test vehicles to be covered by general liability insurance in the amount of $5,000,000 or more.
As it is currently written, S1677 requires that a fully autonomous vehicle must “be equipped with crash-avoidance systems, including a camera system and two distinct sensing modalities that are capable of detecting and tracking obstacles in the event of failure of the camera system.” That provision has drawn criticism from Tesla, but Zwicker said recently, “At this point, I don’t think the evidence is sufficient that a single sensor with software can handle situations that humans can.”
Tech Agnostic
