NEW YORK: Rule changes announced by the Trump administration this week could allow automakers to report fewer crashes involving self-driving cars, with Tesla potentially emerging as the main beneficiary.
The Transportation Department announced Thursday that it will no longer require automakers to report certain kinds of non-fatal crashes — but the exception will apply only to partial self-driving vehicles using so-called Level 2 systems, the kind Tesla deploys. Tesla CEO Elon Musk had complained the old reporting rules cast his company in a bad light.
If Tesla and other automakers are required to report fewer crashes into a national database, that could make it more difficult for regulators to catch equipment defects and for the public to access information about a company’s overall safety, auto industry analysts say. It will also allow Tesla to trumpet a cleaner record to sell more cars.
“This will significantly reduce the number of crashes reported by Tesla,” said auto analyst Sam Abuelsamid at Telemetry Insight. Added Dan Ives of Wedbush Securities, noting that Tesla rival Waymo won’t get an exception, “This is a win for Tesla, a loss for Waymo.”
Tesla stock soared nearly 10 percent Friday on the rule changes. Wall Street analysts, and Musk critics, have said that Musk’s role as an adviser to President Donald Trump could put Tesla in position to benefit from any changes to regulations involving self-driving cars.
Other car makers such as Hyundai, Nissan, Subaru and BMW make vehicles with Level 2 systems that help keep cars in lanes, change speed or brake automatically, but Tesla accounts for the vast majority on the road. Vehicles used by Waymo and others with systems that completely take over for the driver, called Automated Driving Systems, will not benefit from the change.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which enforces vehicle safety standards, said the new rules don’t favor one type of self-driving system over another, and that raft of changes it announced will help all self-driving automakers.
“No ADS company is hurt by these changes,” the agency said in statement to The Associated Press, using the acronym for Automatic Driving System. It added that the changes also make sense because “with ADS, no driver is present meaning stronger safety protocols are needed.”
Waymo declined to comment for this story. The AP reached out to Tesla but did not receive a reply.
Under the change, any Level 2 crash that is so bad it needs a tow truck to come will no longer be required to be reported if it doesn’t result in death or injury or air-bag deployment. But if a tow truck is called for crashes of vehicles using ADS, it has to be reported.
The vast majority of partial self-driving vehicle crashes reported under the old NHTSA rules involved Teslas — more than 800 of a total 1,040 crashes in the past 12 months, according to an AP review of the data. It’s unclear how many of those Tesla crashes required the vehicles to be towed, because a column requesting that information in the database is mostly blank.
The NHTSA said after the story was published that only 8 percent of total reported crashes under the old criteria were cases in which partial self-driving vehicles had to be towed away and there was no other qualifying crash-reporting factor involved. It is not clear about cases where tow-away information wasn’t provided.
The relaxed crash rule was part of several changes described by the Transportation Department as a way to “streamline” paperwork and allow US companies to better compete with the China in the race to make self-driving vehicles. The department said it would also move toward national self-driving regulations to replace a confusing patchwork of state rules.
“We’re in a race with China to out-innovate, and the stakes couldn’t be higher,” said Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy on Thursday. “Our new framework will slash red tape and move us closer to a single national standard.”
Traffic safety watchdogs had feared that the Trump administration would eliminate the NHTSA reporting requirement completely.
The package of changes came days after Musk confirmed on a conference call with Tesla investors that the electric vehicle maker will begin a rollout of self-driving Tesla taxis in Austin, Texas, in June. Waymo, which is owned by Google parent Alphabet, already has cybercabs available in that city and several others.
Musk has argued that the previous reporting requirements were unfair since Tesla vehicles all use its partial self-driving systems and therefore log more miles than any other automaker with such technology. He says that his cars are far safer than most and save lives.
Tesla sales have plunged in recent month amid a backlash against Musk’s backing of far-right politicians in Europe and his work in the US as head of Trump’s government cost-cutting group. The company has pinned its future on complete automation of its cars, but it is facing stiff competition now from rivals, especially China automaker BYD.
Tesla could benefit the most from new rules on reporting of self-driving car crashes
https://arab.news/5rah2
Tesla could benefit the most from new rules on reporting of self-driving car crashes
- Tesla CEO and Trump adviser Elon Musk had complained the old reporting rules cast his company in a bad light
- Critics said the new rules is "a win for Tesla, a loss for Waymo,” Tesla's rival which is not covered by the exemptions
Bus crash blaze kills 38 in Tanzania
The accident in Sabasaba, in the Kilimanjaro region, on Saturday evening occurred after one of the bus’s tires punctured, causing the driver to lose control.
“A total of 38 people died in the crash, including two women,” a presidency statement said, adding that 28 others were wounded.
“However, due to the extent of the burns, 36 bodies remain unidentified,” the presidency said.
Six of the injured were still in hospital for treatment, it added.
Deadly crashes are frequent on Tanzania’s roads.
In a 2018 report, the World Health Organization estimated that 13,000 to 19,000 people in Tanzania were killed in traffic accidents in 2016, far higher than the government’s official toll of 3,256.
EU must be more assertive with Israel: Ex-foreign policy chief
- Josep Borrell: Europe has been ‘relegated to the sidelines’ in mediating conflict
- Country ‘carrying out the largest ethnic-cleansing operation since end of Second World War’
LONDON: The EU must adopt a more assertive posture against Israel over its violations of international law in Gaza, Josep Borrell, the bloc’s former foreign policy chief, has said.
In an article for Foreign Affairs magazine, Borrell argued that the EU has a “duty” to intervene over the humanitarian catastrophe in the Palestinian enclave, The Guardian reported.
Rather than relying on the US to bring an end to the war, Europe must launch its own plan, he said.
The article was co-authored with Kalypso Nicolaidis, a Franco-Greek academic who has advised the EU.
“Europe can no longer afford to linger at the margin. The EU needs a concerted plan,” the two authors said.
“Not only is Europe’s own security at stake, but more important, European history imposes a duty on Europeans to intervene in response to Israel’s violations of international law.
“Europeans cannot stay the hapless fools in this tragic story, dishing out cash with their eyes closed.”
Borrell’s successor, Kaja Kallas, said last week that it was “very clear” Israel had breached its human rights commitments during its war on Gaza.
However, the “concrete question” remains the choice of action EU member states can agree on in response, she added.
Last month, 17 EU member states, in protest against Israel’s blockade of humanitarian aid to Gaza, triggered a review of the bloc’s association agreement with Israel, which covers trade and other cooperation.
Borrell last month accused Tel Aviv of “carrying out the largest ethnic-cleansing operation since the end of the Second World War.”
Europe’s inconsistent response to the humanitarian crisis can be partly explained by the reluctance of some countries — including Germany, Hungary and Austria — to take action against Israel for historical reasons, Borrell and Nicolaidis wrote.
Yet there are ways for other EU member states to take action without requiring a continent-wide consensus, they said, highlighting the EU’s financial leverage and the utility of European programs for Israel, including the Erasmus student exchange scheme.
EU member states could also invoke Article 20 of the EU’s treaty to “allow for at least nine member states to come together to utilize certain foreign policy tools not related to defense,” they wrote.
“Because such an action has never been taken before, those states would have to explore what (it) … would concretely allow them to do,” the Foreign Affairs article said.
The EU has been rendered ineffective in applying pressure due to disunity, the two authors said, arguing that the bloc should act as a powerful mediator in the Middle East.
“Some EU leaders cautiously backed the International Criminal Court’s investigations, while others, such as Austria and Germany, have declined to implement its arrest warrants against Israeli officials,” they wrote.
“And because EU member states, beginning with Germany and Hungary, could not agree on whether to revisit the union’s trade policy with Israel, the EU continues to be Israel’s largest trading partner.
“As a result, the EU, as a bloc, has been largely relegated to the sidelines, divided internally and overshadowed in ceasefire diplomacy by the US and regional actors such as Egypt and Qatar. Shouldn’t the EU also have acted as a mediator?”
Ukraine on track to withdraw from Ottawa anti-personnel mines treaty, lawmaker says
KYIV: Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has signed a decree on the country’s withdrawal from the Ottawa Convention, which bans the production and use of anti-personnel mines, a senior Ukrainian lawmaker said on Sunday.
Ukraine ratified the convention in 2005 and a parliamentary decision is needed to withdraw from the treaty.
The document is not yet available on the website of the president’s office.
“This is a step that the reality of war has long demanded. Russia is not a party to this Convention and is massively using mines against our military and civilians,” Roman Kostenko, secretary of the Ukraine parliament’s committee on national security, defense and intelligence, said on his Facebook page.
“We cannot remain tied down in an environment where the enemy has no restrictions,” he added, saying that the legislative decision must definitively restore Ukraine’s right to effectively defend its territory.
Russia has intensified its offensive operations in Ukraine in recent months, using significant superiority in manpower.
Kostenko did not say when the issue would be debated in parliament.
Air India plane crash probe looking at all angles: minister
- All but one of the 242 people on board the Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner were killed when it crashed in the western city of Ahmedabad on June 12
- Authorities have identified 19 others who died on the ground, but a police source said after the crash that the toll was 38
NEW DELHI: An Indian aviation minister on Sunday said investigators were probing “all angles” behind an Air India crash when asked by media about possible sabotage.
All but one of the 242 people on board the Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner were killed when it crashed in the western city of Ahmedabad on June 12.
Authorities have identified 19 others who died on the ground, but a police source told AFP after the crash that the toll was 38.
India’s minister of state for civil aviation, Murlidhar Mohol, said the investigation was looking at “all angles” when asked specifically about possible “sabotage,” in an interview with Indian news channel NDTV.
“It has never happened before that both engines have shut off together,” Mohol said earlier in the interview, in reference to theories by some experts of possible dual-engine failure.
The minister added that until the investigation report is published, it would be premature to comment on the cause.
The team appointed to investigate the crash started extracting data from the plane’s cockpit voice and flight data recorders this week, in an attempt to reconstruct the sequence of events leading to the disaster.
Air India has said that the plane was “well-maintained” and that the pilots were accomplished flyers.
Germany seeks Israeli partnership on cyberdefense, plans ‘cyber dome’
BERLIN: Germany is aiming to establish a joint German-Israeli cyber research center and deepen collaboration between the two countries’ intelligence and security agencies, German Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt said on Sunday.
Germany is among Israel’s closest allies in Europe, and Berlin has increasingly looked to draw upon Israel’s defense expertise as it boosts its military capabilities and contributions to NATO in the face of perceived growing threats from Russia and China.
“Military defense alone is not sufficient for this turning point in security. A significant upgrade in civil defense is also essential to strengthen our overall defensive capabilities,” Dobrindt said during a visit to Israel, as reported by Germany’s Bild newspaper.
Dobrindt, who was appointed by new German Chancellor Friedrich Merz last month, arrived in Israel on Saturday.
According to the Bild report, Dobrindt outlined a five-point plan aimed at establishing what he called a “Cyber Dome” for Germany, as part of its cyberdefense strategy.
Earlier on Sunday, Bavarian Prime Minister Markus Soeder called for the acquisition of 2,000 interceptor missiles to equip Germany with an “Iron Dome” system similar to Israel’s short-range missile defense technology.
