Ford, GM and Toyota Join Hands to Create Rules for Self-Driving Cars

Ford, GM and Toyota Join Hands to Create Rules for Self-Driving Cars
An organization with a name right out of a science fiction movie – Automated Vehicle Safety Consortium (AVSC) – was born this week as three carmakers and a professional association decided to step up and try to address safety concerns surrounding self-driving cars.

Ford, GM and Toyota Join Hands to Create Rules for Self-Driving Cars

The main goal of the new organization is to create the necessary framework around which carmakers can develop safe technologies for the future of motoring. This framework is also meant to form the basis for future industry standards.

The carmakers that decided to be involved in this project are the ones that have the most advanced autonomous cars testing programs in progress. Ford, General Motors and Toyota will be working together with SAE International towards that end.

First on the agenda will be the release of a roadmap of priorities that will apply to developers, manufacturers and integrators of automated vehicle technology, and will focus on data sharing, vehicle interaction with other road users and safe testing guidelines.

“Safety is at the center of everything we do at General Motors, and that’s certainly the case with our development of self-driving technology,” said in a statement John Capp, director of Global Vehicle Safety at GM. 

“We are eager to bring our experience to this consortium and to collaborate with other like-minded companies, so we can realize the true benefits of this technology and work toward a future with zero crashes, zero emissions and zero congestion.”

The work of the AVSC will be of extreme importance for the future of motoring, should it succeed in doing what it set out to do. Ford plans to have a fully autonomous car on the road by 2021, Toyota allegedly even faster, and GM has even created a separate division within its ranks to handle the development of AVs exclusively.

Alongside them, a host of other carmakers, but also companies that usually have nothing to do with the auto industry, are pushing toward the same goal.

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