To Connect or Not to Connect? Federal Regulators Disagree Over New Car Tech

Maybe they need a better connection. Several senior government regulators have taken what appears to be opposing positions on the need to mandate connected-car technology in the next few years.

While the head of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration this week said he favors the use of the technology, believing it could reduce accidents, injuries and fatalities, a senior official with the Federal Trade Commission warned Congress this week that rushing connected cars to market could compromise privacy.

Connected-car rules proposed by the Department of Transportation falls short of “providing any substantive protections for consumer data,” warned Maneesha Mithal, associate director of the FTC’s Division of Privacy and Identity Protection.

Connected-car technology actually falls into two separate categories: vehicle-to-vehicle, or V2V, and Vehicle to Infrastructure, or V2I. But the ultimate goal is to create a network of smart cars that would know what is happening on the highway ahead, whether the road is clear, covered with ice or tied up in traffic.

The technology also would help improve the capabilities of the autonomous vehicles expected to start going into production over the next decade, proponents contend.

Mark Rosekind, the head of the NHTSA, has frequently said that connected-car technology could help yield major improvements in automotive safety. He got a first-hand demonstration of what could be in store during a demonstration by the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute this week. It is participating in one of several regional initiatives to test and demonstrate V2V and V2I technologies.

At one point, vehicles equipped with onboard communications systems were able to detect a construction worker on the road because he was wearing a special vest with its own built-in communications equipment.

“We’re out of the lab. We’re in the real world,” said Rosekind.

Rosekind’s boss, Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx, gave connected-cars a major push when, in May, he called for a proposal to mandate the installation of the technology on future vehicles.

The debate over connected-car technology could come down to a conflict between safety and privacy – at least unless automotive researchers can do a better job of keeping hackers out.

Read more of the original article in The Detroit Bureau.

The post To Connect or Not to Connect? Federal Regulators Disagree Over New Car Tech appeared first on Fleet Management Weekly.

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