In the past, automotive diagnostic scanners were rather expensive. But today you can get a wireless interface for $10 online and use a multitude of apps to read codes, log, and monitor data in a wide variety of ways. Dedicated scanners have come down in price as well, such as the UT850 OBD2 scanner by Uten.

People often joke that if a Volkswagen's "Check Engine" light turns off, rather than on, only then is something wrong with the car. That's how frequent older VWs throw a trouble code. My 2003 Jetta is no exception, having only passed Massachusetts inspection because it is now old enough to not require emission testing. But that makes it the perfect test subject for the scanner, with actual trouble code data to retrieve and record.

The Uten UT850 scanner looks like a professional grade unit you would see at a shop. Unlike a fragile smartphone or tablet, the scanner is big and bulky, not likely to get broken or lost. The simple buttons are large and bulky like you might find on a kid's toy, which means they can be easily operated with gloves on. The color screen illuminates as soon as you plug the scanner into a car, whether the ignition is on or not. It's not a touchscreen, but that's OK because the scanner seems designed to be operated with gloves on, which means a touchscreen wouldn't work with gloves anyway.

Press the "I/M" button, and after reading the car's data the scanner will present a simple display of everything a state emission test would check. In this example, if my Jetta still required such testing, it would fail because of three trouble codes and a problem in the evaporative emissions system. But there are no misfire issues, which the car had before its extended stay at the shop and subsequent repair. The heated catalytic converter and exhaust gas recirculation system are not supported by the Jetta's onboard diagnostic system, so they are greyed out on the display.

From the main menu, select Diagnostics, and after syncing with car's computer the scanner will display these trouble codes. I found a P4200, indicating a problem in the evaporative emission system again, and a P0420, indicating that the catalytic converter wasn't working as well as expected. Both of these problems are related to emissions, but not the reliable operation of the car, and since this car is exempt from Massachusetts emission testing they can be ignored.

But the third code, a P0321, may explain a running problem the Jetta recently developed. It indicates a problem with the car's engine speed sensor. Occasionally, when coming to a stop, the engine has stalled on me and refused to start again. If I wait a minute or bump start it by dumping the clutch while rolling it will start and run just fine. This condition could be caused by the ignition system not knowing the engine speed, and not knowing when to fire the spark plugs. The engine speed sensor is also a fairly common failure in Volkswagen's 1.8T engine. It may be worth replacing this sensor to try and fix the problem.

Anyway, back to the scanner itself. Although it looks like a professional unit, it does not have many of the expanded features of the higher priced units a shop would actually use. My anti-lock brake warning light recently turned on, indicating that the Jetta's ABS no longer works. A Volkswagen VAG-COM interface would let me connect to the ABS computer to determine exactly what went wrong. The Uten UT850 will not. I needed a friend with a professional grade scanner to program the Jetta's airbag system to only look for the two front airbags since it detected an error with the side curtain airbags after I removed them during the Ute conversion. So despite its professional appearance, this scanner does no more than any other consumer-grade OBD2 scanner will do.

But the UT850 is still a highly capable OBD2 scanner. It can monitor numerous parameters of your engine in real time. It can also record this data to a log file that can be reviewed later when you're not driving the car. It can even generate graphical displays of certain parameters, which look great on the 2.8-inch color screen.

Smartphone apps that interface with an OBD2 Wi-Fi or Bluetooth can do amazing things with the car's data. In addition to diagnostics, they can perform horsepower tests, zero to 60 and quarter-mile timed runs, and display real-time gauges of any available OBD2 parameter. I even have an app that displays a Knight Rider style dashboard on my Android head unit using actual data from the car. The Uten UT850 will do none of this.

But for pure diagnostics, there's a lot to be said for a scanner that plugs into your car and simply works instantly. It's often difficult for me to make my Wi-Fi interface, iPhone, and the DashCommand app all talk to each other. That app, as well as my Bluetooth interface for the Android head unit, also take time to connect and start. What you lose in flexibility you gain in simplicity and ease of use in the Uten scanner.

For $69.99 on Amazon, the Uten UT850 is more expensive than the combination of a Wi-Fi or Bluetooth OBD2 adapter and the accompanying smartphone or tablet app. But it's designed for the job of diagnostic work, and aside from containing enhanced professional features, it does that job extremely well. If you, like me, are a hobbyist with an older car whose "Check Engine" light always seems to be on for one reason or another, the Uten UT850 is a great tool for troubleshooting.

If language is destiny, then the language of self-driving cars is broken. People are dying because of it, and whatever benefits we might see—from safety to pollution to traffic—will be delayed unless we solve this problem. Everyone is guilty, from the media to automakers, tech companies, marketers and investors, all of whom—whether they know it or not—muddle terms like autonomy, automation, autopilot, driverless and self-driving to suit their own narratives.

Everyone wants to believe, but no one knows what anyone else is talking about.

There are no self-driving or autonomous cars available today, which means that responsibility for every road death—whether in a Tesla or any car whose driver misunderstood the limits of technologies that aren't yet remotely autonomous—falls on anyone slinging the current language.

The engineers understand what machines can do, but they're not in the education business. Get too many of them together and definitions are reduced to the lowest common denominator, which are the primary ingredients in the self-driving word soup we slurp every time we open our news feeds. We can't invest in, solve, buy or use what we don't understand, and that requires a new set of definitions. Any solution has to be as simple as possible, because the inevitable regulation of self-driving requires not only that regulators understand it, but that everyone does.

I've got one potential solution, but to get there we need to deconstruct the language that is the problem.

The Problem With The SAE Automation Levels

The root of all confusion is the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) taxonomy of automation, commonly referred to as the SAE levels, which have become the global standard for defining self-driving. The SAE taxonomy was well intentioned, but intentions don't solve problems, solutions do. The SAE taxonomy attempted to classify vehicular automation by defining four (and eventually five) levels; but here's what happens when you Google "SAE Automation Levels":

Those are some pretty fancy charts, not one of which solves any problem other than how to keep graphic designers employed.

Let's deconstruct even the simplest graphical interpretation of the SAE taxonomy:

I see the word automation, but where does self-driving start on this chart? What about autonomy? How about a driverless car? What is the difference between partial and conditional automation? How much is partial? What are the conditions? If Level 2 includes speed-sensitive cruise control, why is "Traffic Jam Chauffeur" Level 3? What's a Parking Garage Pilot? Lots of cars will park themselves now. The above chart doesn't reduce confusion, it increases it.

How about this one, courtesy of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), who blindly adopted the SAE taxonomy?

A lot more information, none of it helpful. Where do systems like Tesla Autopilot and Cadillac SuperCruise fit? Their manufacturers aren't saying. I'd say between 1.5 and 2.5, which means the chart isn't good enough, or the systems don't work well enough, or maybe they work too well. I recently heard someone talk about a 4+ car, and I have no idea what that is.

What about Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS)? You know, the packages with Automatic Emergency Braking and the good cruise control? Are those 1 or 2? It depends on how good they are, and let me tell you, some of them really suck. (You know who you are.)

Newsflash: All of this is why no car maker wants to define their cars by SAE levels. They'll let the media run free defining their cars' functionality for them, or attach buzzwords to concept demonstration drives, but they're terrified of staking ground within the popular taxonomy.

Even a noble simplification effort by Jess Dunietz of SAFE doesn't solve the problem. Here he reduces the SAE taxonomy to this:

1. Cruise control.
2. Traffic-sensitive cruise control for both steering and speed.
3. Self-driving, but with a human available to take over if needed.
4. No driver needed, under the right conditions.
5. No driver needed ever.

This distillation doesn't line up with NHTSA's own interpretation. How can a Level 3 car be "self-driving" if a human must be available to take over if needed? Based on the absence of Level 3 cars on the market, a lot more human input is needed than car makers want to admit. This is why terms like semi-automated and semi-autonomous are necessary, and yet still mere band-aids.

You can't fix a taxonomy this broken.

It gets worse. I once spoke to a self-driving developer whose car had crashed. "What level is it?" investigators asked him. It's not that simple, he answered, because what the car is during testing is different from what it is at deployment. His position? If it's 2 or 3 during testing, it should be judged as such, even if the goal is 4. You can imagine how that went down.

What good are the levels if developers and investigators can't agree on what they are?

The SAE levels aren't just functionally vague, they're also conceptually strict. The SAE taxonomy only considers "series" automation, forcing humans and machines into a zero-sum equation where one is sacrificed for the other on an inexorable path to 100% machine control. The SAE levels ignore forms of automation that don't fit, like the "parallel" automation systems used in aviation, which you can learn about here and here.

Even VC Benedict Evans, Andreessen Horowitz's entertaining blogger/thinker, who wrote a very insightful essay called "Steps to autonomy", stays within the SAE conceptual framework. In it he criticizes the SAE hierarchy, pointing out that the same car may be L2 here, L3 over here, and L4 over there, which means the levels—and the language we use to describe them—must be specific to functionality and not the vehicle itself.

Only one person—technologist Brad Templeton—has successfully deconstructed why the SAE levels don't work. For those who don't want to read the definitive essay on the topic, his thesis boils down to this:

1. No taxonomy can work if it's defined by the role of the human within it.
2. The SAE charts suggest a progression of automation that doesn't exist, because...
3. Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) have nothing to do with self-driving.

Templeton even says "I believe a case can be made that the [SAE] levels are holding the industry back, and have a possible minor role in the traffic fatalities we have seen with Tesla Autopilot."

Templeton isn't just right; his argument doesn't go far enough. Not only are the SAE levels holding the industry back through omission of parallel (and other) systems yet to be invented, of course the levels have a role in traffic fatalities, especially those involving Tesla Autopilot. SAE is the only organization capable of defining, renouncing and improving the language of self-driving. That Elon Musk has so easily exploited the generic word "autopilot" for their branding is as much an indictment of the SAE levels as it is of Tesla's marketing department.

What's the Solution?

There is only one solution, and that's to toss the SAE language and start from scratch. The bar for use of the words "autonomous" and "self-driving" needs to be set so high that no media outlet can exploit them for traffic, no car company car use them in a press release to boost their stock price, and most importantly, no driver thinks they can take their hands off the wheel, even temporarily.

I've got an idea. It starts with a new word: Geotonomous.

Want to know more? Stay tuned for my next column: How To Replace The SAE Automation Levels.

Alex Roy—Founder of the Human Driving Association, Editor at The Drive, Host of The Autonocast, co-host of /DRIVE on NBC Sports and author of The Driver—has set numerous endurance driving records, including the infamous Cannonball Run record. You can follow him on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Retired Air Force Chief of Staff General Norton Schwartz has stated in his new memoir that F-22 production was idiotically axed after building less than half the required number so that the flying force could get then-Secretary of Defense Robert Gates to approve building a new stealth bomber.

Air Force Magazine was first to report on the revelations from the General's new book “Journey: Memoirs of an Air Force Chief of Staff,” which also includes much more detail about how exactly the fight for the F-22 was lost, as well as how the battle to re-launch a Next Generation Bomber program was eventually won.

Behind the scenes, Schwartz's predecessor General Mike Moseley "never gave up in his principled attempts to get those 381 F-22s" the book states. That push ended up getting Moseley fired along with his civilian counterpart, Air Force Secretary Mike Wynn. After the culling, the brass thought that the new bomber was simply too important and that the chances of winning both the F-22 and bomber arguments with Gates, who was staunchly averse to building high-priced weapons that couldn't be used in Iraq or Afghanistan, was next to zero.

Schwartz, in an attempt to see if a reduced F-22 production number would be palatable to the Defense Secretary, executed an independent assessment that ended up stating 243 F-22s was the absolute minimum the force could get by with. But Gates balked at that number as well.

After that final push, Schwartz and his colleagues gave up on the F-22 production fight as it had already "consumed enough oxygen." The idea of going to the powers that be in Washington, DC behind Gates's back to lobby for the jet was a non-starter for the General as he didn't want to betray his boss, no matter how poor his decision making seemed to be regarding the Raptor issue.

The need for the new bomber would now become a top procurement priority and having sacrificed something at the fiscal altar gave Schwartz and the USAF brass of the era some momentum for making a case for that bomber. But still, convincing the civilian leadership that a new stealth bomber was needed even during a time when a peer-state conflict was anything but the major military issue of the day was going to be a major undertaking. Gates had also terminated the prior bomber effort, known as Next Generation Bomber (NGB), for what Schwartz calls "rational reasons."

Air Force Magazine states:

This is only partly true. Unit cost does not take into account sunk research and development costs first of all, and the B-2 unit cost itself had ballooned as well. Regardless, Schwartz—a helicopter and transport pilot by trade— saw the bomber as an "unquestioned requirement" that would be needed by future presidents "both for warfighting and deterrence purposes." So they went about convincing Gates that the bomber could be had for an acceptable price and without the massive developmental risk associated with Next Generation Bomber. This included keeping requirements fixed and costs down by using existing subsystems and other components, as well as other offboard jamming and sensor aircraft that could work together with the bomber as a 'system of systems.'

Air Force Magazine concludes by restating the general's remarks:

All this is interesting for a number of reasons. First, it slams home my position that I have stated for years that Gates is largely to blame for the F-22 production debacle, along with a whole slew of near-sighted decisions and calls—in particular, poor handicapping of near-peer adversaries technological abilities and intent. Discounting the quick rise of China's stealth fighter programs is among the worst calls Gates made.

Other developments in North Korea and Russia were also poorly foreseen and/or outright brushed aside during his term. He was very focused on Iraq and Afghanistan, which is understandable, but in doing so he seemed to totally set aside America's greater defense needs in the process and seemed to believe that low-end adversaries would be the only threat to America for the decades to come. A highly controversial mindset at the time, and one which we are paying dearly for today.

In other words, I would not want to be betting on Gates's picks at a race track.

Air Force Magazine backs up this train of thought as well, stating:

Beyond the F-22 production saga, we get some rare insights and affirmations as to the USAF's bomber programs of the era and the birth of the B-21 Raider. The Next Generation Bomber initiative was and remains highly classified, and with this new commentary, the idea that it was truly a "and the kitchen sink" program is reinforced. It also underlines how the USAF's move to arm its next bomber with air-to-air weapons for self-defense was a major objective back then.

We have discussed this capability at length here at The War Zone, and the B-21 may be able to attain this capability far easier than its NGB predecessor as it is thought to use off-the-shelf mission systems—possibly those associated closely with the F-35—that already support this capability. The Air Force is hard at work quietly developing very long-range air-to-air missiles that the B-21 could carry into battle and without even needing the ability to target them themselves, instead, it could rely on network connectivity and teaming with stealthy fighter aircraft to do so.

Norton's comments also underline something we have been trying to make clear for a long time—the B-21 is part of a larger clandestine ecosystem of new penetrating air capabilities being developed to take on peer-state opponents and work in concert with the new bomber, as well as independently. This likely includes a strategic reconnaissance aircraft that has existed for some time, unofficially referred to as the RQ-180, which can penetrate enemy airspace and persist there at high altitudes to collect targeting data and electronic intelligence that the B-21 can use in real time for targeting and route planning.

Tactical unmanned combat air vehicles that can be used as sensor and electronic attack platforms, and even as kinetic attack aircraft, are also likely part of this family of systems. These can augment and assist the B-21 on its mission to strike deep in the heart of enemy territory. A new stealthy cruise missile that will almost certainly have a conventional warhead option is also being developed under the LRSO program. So at this point think of the B-21 as the star performer on a dark stage, with many supporting agents working in the darkness so that it can execute a stellar performance.

These elements seem to have been alluded to by Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter on more than one occasion, as well. Even the B-21's eventual arrival at Edwards AFB in the not so distant future has been described to us as being part of a larger family of systems that will be tested there under a unified 'program of programs' umbrella. These associated systems are very likely to have been operating for some time in the darkness but could become more visible as the B-21 pushes its way toward initial operating capability in the mid 2020s.

Also, by building a family of systems that can enable the B-21, the bomber's unit cost, which is an incredibly volatile topic that is further exacerbated by the B-2's dismal fiscal history, can be kept relatively low. With its cadre of lower-density enablers being developed using black budget funds that won't be officially related to the B-21 itself—at least budgetarily—a 'cheaper' B-21 can be built. Basically, it's very possible that the USAF is not only decentralizing some of the bomber's critical capabilities, they are also decentralizing its budget, and thus making it more survivable on the battlefield and on Capitol Hill.

We are looking forward to reading General Schwartz's entire memoir and finding out what other interesting tidbits of information are laced throughout its pages. We will report back with a full review when we do.

Contact the author: Tyler@thedrive.com

We've reviewed some highly impressive dash cams lately, but what if you don't need or can't afford a $350 unit with all of the bells and whistles? For just a fraction of the price, Uten offers a simple dash cam that still includes all of the most important features in a modern camera.

Unlike the Blackvue and Vava cameras The Drive tested previously, the Uten has no built-in GPS. It will allow you to plug in an external GPS, however, which is not included. The Uten unit also does not support Wi-Fi. In fact, unlike the Owl dash cam, it has no data connection at all. Instead, the Uten goes old school and offers a variety of menus for configuration right on the camera itself rather than a smartphone app.

But unlike the Blackvue and Vava cameras, the Uten has a built-in 800x480 pixel resolution screen. Its single camera will record video in 1296p, slightly higher than the 1080p of most other cameras. Like the more expensive competition, the Uten also has a G-force sensor to detect impacts when the car is parked and can be configured to record a short video when an impact is detected. This can be handy for catching hit-and-run perpetrators.

One feature the Uten offers that I haven't seen in any other dash cam is lane departure warning. That's right, my 2003 Volkswagen Jetta with no modern driver aids whatsoever now has lane departure warning thanks to the Uten dash cam installed in it. The camera is able to detect the lane ahead of you and provides an audio warning if it sees that you've weaved out of your lane. Unfortunately, in places like my driveway where it's unclear where it has trouble detecting the lane, it assumes that you're not in the lane and goes off incessantly. The lane departure warning can't be disabled, but I turned the camera's volume all the way down so that the false warnings don't bother me.

The lane departure warning is imperfect, but it's a feature you can live without. Such is not the case for the mounting system, which consists of a plastic pedestal that you stick to your windshield with double-sided tape. (I prefer a suction mount that I can transfer from one car to another.) After using the camera for a few days, I tried to remove it to take it inside and accidentally broke the mount. The camera was no longer usable at this point. Uten quickly sent me a replacement unit, which I was more careful with and had no further difficulties. I should also note that the mount broke during the unusually cold weather New England had in early April, which might have made the plastic more brittle. In any case, I'd recommend against removing the camera from the mount if you can avoid it. It's easy to remove the microSD card from the bottom of the camera while it is installed in your car.

The Uten dash cam isn't perfect, but for a retail price of $59.99, it's still a good deal for what you get. All of the basic functionality is there, and when it came to recording video, it worked great in all lighting conditions. Ultimately, that's what counts in a dash cam, and the Uten has that down. While sometimes you can find the Vava on sale, the Uten is less than half the Vava's $149.99 retail price, which itself is half the cost of the Blackvue and Owl cameras. That's already a good price, but using coupon code "Uten7826" on Amazon will drop the price 30 percent to just $41.99. I can't think of a better dash cam for the money.

General Motors, Volvo, and Amazon announced in conjunction Tuesday that delivery to the Amazon Prime members' automobiles is now a possibility, as a deterrent to "porch pirate" package thieves, with the Amazon Key app.

Eligibility is restricted by region at present, with members of the online retailer's upgraded Prime membership tier able to check if their region is included on Amazon's site. Even if a customer resides in a region in which Amazon Key delivery is available, they must own a service-compatible vehicle. Only 2015 model year (or newer) vehicles manufactured by Volvo or General Motors with Onstar equipped will open sesame for parcel handlers. With the vehicle opening on a remote command, delivery personnel will carry no digital skeleton keys.

Vehicles themselves must be within two blocks of the address registered with the account, and cannot be located in multistory parking garages. Just one vehicle may be tied to the service per account, and not every item found in the vast Amazon catalog is eligible. The product must depart from an Amazon warehouse—not an independent seller—and anything in need of a signature cannot be delivered to your trunk. Weight must undercut 50 pounds, and the box cannot exceed 26 by 21 by 16 inches.

"Partnering with Amazon to leverage our embedded in-vehicle connectivity gives Chevrolet, Buick, GMC and Cadillac owners the option to conveniently receive deliveries inside their vehicle parked at home, work or near other locations in their Amazon address book," stated Alan Batey, president of GM in North America in his company's release. "This is another example of how we provide customers with technologies that add value and enhance the ownership experience."

"Simplifying the customer experience is central to Volvo’s digital vision," added Atif Rafiq, Volvo's chief digital officer. "Receiving a package securely and reliably in your car, without you having to be there, is something we think many people will appreciate. This mix of car and commerce is starting the next wave of innovation and we intend to be at the forefront."

The most common excuse heard in a car vs. motorcycle crash is the car driver saying, "I didn't see the motorcycle." The fact that motorcycles have their headlights on during the day by design and by law is no longer adequate to ensure that others on the road can see them. As cars have gained additional daytime lighting, motorcycles need to stay ahead in the visibility game as well.

My 1980 Suzuki GS550E had a rather unique feature that you won't find on any modern motorcycle: A headlight switch. That's right, you could manually turn the bike's lights on and off while it was running. That was the last year such a switch was available. As of 1981, motorcycles sold in the U.S. have been required to have their lights on at all times to make them more visible.

This worked well for a while. But today, nearly all cars in the U.S. have daytime running lights. There are good safety reasons for this, but they create their own unique dangers as well. One of them is that they erase the visibility advantage that motorcycles once enjoyed over cars that did not have their lights on during the day. In fact, since cars run two daytime running lights as opposed to the motorcycle's single headlight, bikes are now less visible than ever.

The solution is to add more lights to motorcycles. But it's important to do so intelligently, and not start an illumination arms race that will cause burned out batteries and charging systems. Big cruisers often come with a pair of driving lights on either side of the main headlight. This provides not only more light, but also an appearance unique to a motorcycle.

As a motorcycle rider, I've suffered my own fair share of oncoming vehicles turning left across my path. But ever since adding a pair of LED driving lights to my Honda Shadow I've noticed this happening far less often than it used to. In fact, other drivers seem less likely to cut me off or crowd me in all situations. Perhaps this is because having multiple lights on my bike helps them gauge the distance between us more accurately, something the single point of light from a single headlight doesn't allow.

You can easily drop hundreds of dollars on chrome light bars or specialized LED lighting that will throw light thousands of feet down the road ahead of you. But all I'm using is a $14.99 pair of LED driving lights from Yitamotor that I originally bought for the Jetta Ute project before upgrading its headlights. I would have chosen a different design if I'd bought them specifically for the bike, but these work fine. Why fix what isn't broken?

It's unlikely that regulations will change to require a three-headlight configuration on all motorcycles anytime soon. But as I've learned, it's both cheap and easy to install extra lighting on a motorcycle yourself. The improvement in safety is well worth the minimal investment of time and money.

While U.S. regulators seem to have lost interest in enforcing them, Shell expects emissions standards for commercial trucks to get stricter, so it's hedging its bets with what it calls a "hyper fuel-efficient" semi truck project. Dubbed the Starship, it was developed in concert with the AirFlow Truck Company, which has been working to boost the fuel economy of big trucks since the 1980s.

The Starship certainly looks more like a spacecraft than a semi truck. The streamlined body is made from carbon fiber. The tractor sports active grille shutters like the ones used on many current passenger cars and pickup trucks, while trailer sports side skirts and "boat tail" extension panels to further smooth out airflow. The trailer also has a 5,000-watt solar array, which helps power electrical components.

Underneath the sleek bodywork sits a Cummins X15 six-cylinder diesel engine, rated at 400 horsepower and 1,850 pound-feet of torque. The engine uses a new low-viscosity, fully-synthetic oil developed by Shell, and is mated to an Eaton 18-speed automated manual transmission. The engine and transmission have been calibrated to run at speeds as low as 800 rpm, which Shell claims will improve efficiency and pulling power.

Shell did not quote any fuel-economy statistics for the Starship, but AirFlow's last effort, the 2012 Bullet Truck, achieved 13.4 mpg while hauling 65,000 pounds on a coast-to-coast run. Shell and AirFlow are planning a similar run for the Starship. In May, the truck will drive from California to Florida carrying 80,000 pounds of cargo.

AirFlow and Shell also plan to install a hybrid system in the Starship, although it's unclear if that upgrade will be ready in time for the truck's coast-to-coast trip. The plan is to replace the tractor's non-driven rear axle with a new axle that sports an integrated electric motor. The motor will provide a power boost on hills, and will get its energy from an onboard battery pack. Energy will be harvested during braking.

While Shell wants to wring every last bit of mileage out of internal combustion, other companies are moving on. Tesla and Nikola are developing battery-electric and hydrogen fuel-cell semi trucks, respectively. Even Cummins, which built the Starship's engine, has demonstrated an all-electric truck.

There is a simple explanation for the latest Tesla Autopilot crash. It is not as simple as blaming the "driver," although that's where legal responsibility falls. It's also not as simple as blaming Tesla Autopilot, which isn't a technology but a brand comprised of an evolving set of functionalities. It is the same explanation as every other crash attributed to Tesla Autopilot that has ever occurred, and every crash that will occur in the future as long Tesla or anyone else offers such systems.

The explanation is that "series" automated driving systems—of which Tesla Autopilot is one of only two good ones—cannot eliminate these types of crashes, even if they work perfectly.

Why? Because they're not designed to.

Series automation temporarily substitutes for human input rather than augments it. As I stated a year ago, the more such systems substitute for human input, the more human skills erode, and the more frequently a 'failure' and/or crash is attributed to the technology rather than human ignorance of it. Combine the toxic marriage of human ignorance and skill degradation with an increasing number of such systems on the road, and the number of crashes caused by this interplay is likely to remain constant—or even rise—even if their crash rate declines.

These persistent crashes define the half life of danger: unless and until a universally autonomous/self-driving car arrives, which by definition requires no human input anywhere, anytime, no improvements in automated driving can totally remove the risk of a crash.

Between now and universal autonomy/self-driving, however, there is an alternative to the series systems we currently see on the road. It's called parallel automation, and it has a well established history in aviation. The most advanced commercial and military aircraft combine series and parallel automation, and in concert with professional training have made our skies orders of magnitude safer than our roads.

There is no Tesla Autopilot problem—at least, there is no problem unique to Tesla Autopilot. There is, however, a grave conceptual problem inherent to all series automation, magnified by media scrutiny of Tesla Autopilot at the expense of deeper, broader comprehension of automation, and masked by misunderstanding that starts with language.

Automation ? Autonomy

Critics love to cite Musk's co-opting of "autopilot" (as in, the autopilot in an aircraft) for the Tesla Autopilot branding as misleading, but that merely conflates one misunderstanding with another. Aviation autopilots come in many forms, but none of them make aircraft autonomous. They're automated. Aviation autopilots don't make decisions. They execute them by automating repetitive tasks, and they still don't automate them all—at least in practice. Human pilots remain "in the loop" due to tacit cultural and deliberate technical constraints. Why? To make high-level decisions, and to manage system failures and edge cases. Sully Sullenberger's Miracle on the Hudson is a perfect example of how human pilots manage edge cases. The crew of Air France 447 is a perfect example of how human pilots can fail to manage edge cases.

Human failures don't make the case for more automation, they make the case for better automation.

Anyone who believes aviation autopilots or Tesla Autopilot are autonomous hasn't looked inside an aircraft cockpit and asked themselves why there are seats.

Does this absolve Tesla of responsibility for using "Autopilot" for their branding of a car-based automation suite? Legally yes, but effectively no. Yes, in the sense that Tesla Autopilot does automate many repetitive driving tasks, and includes a system to warn users of when that automation may cease. No, in the sense that some people ignore warnings, conflate automation with autonomy, overtrust systems they don't understand, and often lack the skills to safely retake control even when they do.

Automation and the Problem of Understanding

Automation is only as good or safe as our understanding of it, and we have entered the uncanny valley where understanding it in cars requires a level of driver training equivalent to that of pilots.

What is the solution? It could be driver training via gamification of Autopilot (and similar systems), but no car manufacturer wants to add potential liability. It is both cheaper and easier to wall off responsibility behind warning systems and legalese, but these are passive defenses rather than active solutions.

As long as humans are in the loop, everything must be done to educate them not only to what automation can do, but what it can't. Everything must be done to prevent users from abusing it, even due to their ignorance. If this isn't done by government mandate, auto makers should do it by moral imperative.

A system that works as designed does not equate with a perfect system. If perfection is "the action or process of improving something until it is faultless, or as faultless as possible," then it must include a good faith effort to inform users of both its limitations and purpose.

What is the purpose of Tesla Autopilot and its only functionally equivalent peer, Cadillac SuperCruise? It's not safety, it's convenience. The foundational safety functionality of both systems—radar-based braking—is the core of the Automatic Emergency Braking (AEB) which is active under human control. All Autopilot and SuperCruise equipped vehicles offer radar-based adaptive cruise control which can maintain both speed and distance to a car in front. That any cruise control is safer with radar than without is obvious, but that additional safety is available without activation of the functionality that enables Autopilot and SuperCruise, which is active lane keeping, or what Tesla calls Autosteer.

I have greatly enjoyed using both Autopilot and SuperCruise, but I'm unaware of any study proving that active lane keeping enhances safety. The NHTSA claim that Tesla Autopilot reduces crashes by 40%? They remain unable to explain it, nor has it been verified by any third party I'm aware of. There is every reason to believe that Autopilot safety claims are largely—if not entirely—based on the effectiveness of radar-based braking within TACC and AEB, and that attributing any additional safety to the use of Autopilot/Autosteer may in fact diminish safety, at least in series type-systems.

Let's find out why.

How Safe Can Series Automation Be?

As long as Tesla Autopilot and Cadillac SuperCruise require the "driver" to take over anytime while allowing them to remove their eyes from the road and/or take their hands off the steering wheel, an element of danger will remain. Automated braking and steering may improve, but the half-life of danger will always depend on how aggressively the systems compel driver awareness and reduce human response time to takeover warnings.

As long as there's wiggle room, humans will exploit it.

Given the complex nature of traffic, every millisecond counts. If driver awareness is linked to whether one's eyes are on or off the road, and response time is linked to whether one's hands are on the wheel, a conceptual safety matrix looks like this:

Why is eyes on/hands off safer than eyes off/hands on? Because you can't steer around what you can't see, but you can brake for what you do.

Now let's add the element of eyes off/hands off time intervals:

The shorter the eyes off interval the better, and this can only be reduced via a camera-based driver monitoring system. The shorter the hands off interval the better, and this can only be accomplished by a steering wheel sensor.

What happens when you put the two best series automated driving systems on the chart? Prepare for fireworks:

Why does SuperCruise land where it does? It's got an infrared camera pointed at the driver's face. You can look away, turn your head or lean over, but the system warnings will light up within seconds. Take too long and SuperCruise will shut off. It's very hard to cheat, and I tried. Also, it has a big visual state of engagement light perfectly placed on top of the steering wheel. Is SuperCruise on or off? There's never any doubt. Why isn't SuperCruise further to the right? Audible warnings aren't as good as visual, and because of its liberal hands off policy; you're going to need that extra second to get your hands back on the wheel.

What about Tesla Autopilot? It's complicated. To their credit, Tesla has consistently improved Autopilot's safety since its release in October of 2015. From the 1st gen Autopilot 7 & 8 though the current 2nd generation, hands off intervals have gotten shorter and visual warnings have gotten clearer. Unfortunately, audible warnings remain only adequate and Tesla still doesn't offer an active driver monitoring system. Unless the tiny camera above the Model 3's rear-view mirror wakes up and turns out to have been designed for this purpose, Tesla's current safety hardware is behind Cadillac's. How about those S/X models? No camera. Tough luck.

Furthermore, Tesla's hands off intervals are measured by a steering wheel torque sensor rather than capacitive touch. It's not that hard to cheat a torque sensor with one or more water bottles. It's very hard to cheat a capacitive sensor, and any car with heated steering is a few dollars away from enabling capacitive touch functionality. There's only one reason not to offer capacitive touch, and that's cost.

What is the point of series automation if the convenience of eyes off/hands off must be designed out in order to reduce the half-life of danger? None. At current levels of technology, companies are selling convenience at the expense of safety. I love both Autopilot and SuperCruise, but I don't reduce my vigilance when using them. I increase it. Not because they force me to, but because I know that if I don't, I could be the next Josh Brown or Walter Huang.

What is the solution to the limitations inherent to Autopilot and SuperCruise?

Series Vs. Parallel Automation

The alternative to series automation is a "parallel" or what Toyota Research Institute (TRI) call a "Guardian" system. Parallel systems have barely entered the thinking of an automotive sector trapped within the prison of the SAE automation level definitions. Parallel systems are the opposite of series; they restore the relationship of the driver to driving by forcing hand/eye engagement and limiting the user's ability to make mistakes. If current series systems are like Wall-E chairs that work some of the time, future parallel systems put us all in Iron Man suits.

#WouldYouLikeToKnowMore? Here you go.

What is the perfect car of the future, after all? The perfect car of the future is self-driving when we allow it, and—if and when we choose to take the wheel—won’t let us harm anyone else. That perfect car requires two things we don't yet have on the ground: universal autonomy/self-driving, and parallel automation. Broadly, it would include an Airbus-type system: series automation (autopilot) and parallel automation (flight envelope protections). An Airbus won't let you exceed the limits of the airframe. Why should a car let you steer into a wall?

What about autonomy? Safety requires clarity. If a car requires a human operator or external control anywhere, it's not autonomous, it's automated. Until that arrives, let's call things what they are, and focus on problems we can solve.

How can we seriously attack the half-life of danger until parallel systems and universal autonomy/self-driving arrive? I see at least three options at this time, although there may be others:

1. Ban all active lane keeping, and therefore Autopilot, SuperCruise and any other emergent systems. No one will like this except regulators and Luddites.
2. Mandate geofencing of all series automation to low density, separated highways a la SuperCruise. Tesla could easily do this via wireless update, but who is to say where to place those geofences? Even the excellent SuperCruise works some places it shouldn't.
3. Mandate Driver Monitoring Systems, to include both camera and capacitive touch, therefore banning Autopilot until hardware improvements arrive. Tesla and their investors and owners will hate this. Cadillac? I'm not sure they've sold enough SuperCruise equipped cars to care.

Or we can do nothing and suffer through the same clickbait and hand-wringing over and over until the next crash. And the next one. I'd rather not.

Alex Roy is the founder of the Human Driving Association, Editor at The Drive, Host of The Autonocast, co-host of /DRIVE on NBC Sports and author of The Driver, and has set numerous endurance driving records, including the infamous Cannonball Run record. You can follow him on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

The U.S. Air Force has released a new slickly produced video that gives an inside look into a unique combat search and rescue super team it operates jointly with the U.S. Army in Afghanistan. With the Air Force in the process of replacing its older HH-60G Pave Hawk rescue helicopters with new HH-60W models, it’s particularly interesting to hear the service’s personnel spend much of their time talking about the benefits of the Army’s CH-47F Chinook in the combat search and rescue (CSAR) role.

In October 2017, the Air Force revealed that it would withdraw the 83rd Expeditionary Rescue Squadron’s HH-60Gs and their crews from Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan and replace them with Army CH-47Fs, a development that we at The War Zone were among the first to report. The squadron’s command element and pararescuemen, also referred to as P.J.s, would continue operations as before, but with those new aircraft.

At the time, this was the only remaining U.S. military search and rescue unit in the country. In January 2018, the Air Force did re-deploy some Pave Hawks to Kandahar Airfield in the country’s southeast region.

“At the tactical level, the P.J.s and the Army work seamlessly together,” U.S. Air Force Major Robert Wilson, the commander of the 83rd, says in the video. “It’s as we’ve been doing this for years.”

He’s not wrong. The squadron had conducted multiple joint training and other operations with active Army and National Guard personnel in Afghanistan prior to the decision to reorganize the unit. The Army also operates its own casualty evacuation helicopter elements in the country that likely coordinate at various levels with other services and foreign partners on a routine basis.

And given the increasing age of the HH-60G Pave Hawks and the growing strains on the Air Force’s combat rescue community in general, this more formalized partnership and division of labor made good sense for the tasks at hand in Afghanistan. But Wilson, as well as other members of the unit that the 1st Combat Camera Squadron interviewed for the production, also took the time to not only describe the Chinook as an adequate substitute, but praised it as a far more capable aircraft than their Pave Hawks.

“In this particular area of operations, in Bagram, … the Army Chinook is the best platform to conduct this mission,” Wilson says unequivocally. “We need that aircraft [the CH-47F] to get to places we couldn’t reach before.”

This is all particularly interesting to hear, especially from an official Air Force public relations video, given that the service had picked a variant of Boeing’s Chinook, the HH-47, as the replacement for its Pave Hawks back in 2006. Protests from Lockheed Martin and Sikorsky regarding the contracting process, combined with criticisms about the much greater operating costs of the larger aircraft combined to cancel that program.

There were also very real concerns about whether the Chinook could truly fulfill the mission, especially given its large footprint and the powerful downwash from its twin rotors. These features inherently limit where it can land and could pose a hazard to personnel in the landing zone, which is even more problematic for medics trying to provide immediate aid as the aircraft touches down.

The CH-47 does make up for some of the difficulties it might have fitting into confined landing zones by being able to balance itself on its rear two wheels while hovering to unload personnel and equipment in places where it cannot fully land. This maneuver, known as a pinnacle landing, has been particularly useful in Afghanistan's rugged terrain.

In Afghanistan, the CH-47 is apparently now getting a chance to shine in the role in spite of any of those limitations. One of the biggest issues for units operating out of Bagram is that it sits north of Afghanistan’s capital Kabul, inside a valley surrounded by mountains thousands of feet of high. Any aircraft, fixed wing or helicopter, has to get through that obstacle even just to conduct relatively short range operations from the airfield.

For helicopters, the problem is that high altitudes, as well as hot temperatures, can easily and dangerously degrade their performance. Depending on the weather, especially low cloud cover and fog, it can be equally risky to fly at lower levels through the mountains.

Even beyond Bagram’s immediate vicinity, much of Afghanistan is equally mountainous and can experience high temperatures in the summer months. It can be a foreboding region for helicopter operations, even though the lack of roads and canals down below often make it the most rapid and effective method of traversing the country.

“If somebody’s up in the mountains and they need to be hoisted out of the mountains because there isn’t a suitable landing zone, their [the Army’s CH-47F] aircraft actually has the power to hold a stable hover,” one of the 83rd’s pararescuemen, who the Air Force did not name for operational security reasons, explains.

“With the Chinook having as much power as it does, it allows us to reach very high altitudes without the degradation of the power margin that most other tail rotor aircraft experience as you go up in higher altitudes,” an unnamed Army CH-47F pilot attached to the squadron adds.

Those features have long made CH-47s a workhorse for both conventional and special operations in Afghanistan. In 2017, Ed Darack, photographer and author of The Final Mission of Extortion 17, shared his own experiences with the helicopters while he was embedded with American troops in Afghanistan with us at The War Zone, writing:

The CH-47’s carrying capacity and the large amount of physical space within its main cabin are also major benefits for the joint squadron, according to Wilson and the other interviewees. These features would translate more readily to combat search and rescue operations more generally, too.

“Mass casualty operations is [sic] an inherent risk that takes place within Afghanistan,” Wilson says. “What’s nice about the -47 is I can pick most of those folks up all in one trip.”

The ability to carry larger numbers of patients reduces the total number of aircraft necessary for rescue and casualty evacuation missions. It also potentially speeds up how fast the unit can get those individuals back to Bagram for more intensive care, which in turn improves the likelihood that medical professionals will be able to save their lives or otherwise prevent lasting injuries.

In addition to potentially being able to rush wounded service members back to hospitals faster, the Chinook provides space for better in-flight treatment, as well. “The space that the -47 allows us gives the P.J. more room to operate around the patient to give care,” Wilson notes.

Whether or not non-stealthy helicopters of any kind will be able to perform combat search and rescue missions at all in a future high-end conflict, where low-observable aircraft will be necessary to penetrate in areas full of integrated air defenses and advanced combat aircraft, is a growing question. There will still definitely be a need for these units in more permissive environments, though.

“As long as anybody’s on the ground and aircraft are flying overhead, rescue is needed within Afghanistan,” Major Wilson says. “Period.”

In 2014, the Air Force finally settled on the newer HH-60W variant from Sikorsky – now part of Lockheed Martin – as the Pave Hawk replacement. The first of those helicopters are supposed to begin flight testing later in 2018 and production aircraft will hopefully begin reaching units sometime in 2020.

Those aircraft can’t come fast enough, as the HH-60Gs are steadily showing worrisome signs of their age. The oldest of those helicopters that remain in service first rolled off the production line in the 1980s and are now suffering structural failures.

Though the exact cause of that incident remains under investigation, the Pave Hawk community did suffer a major loss in March 2018, with the crash of an HH-60G near the Syria-Iraq border that killed all seven individuals on board. The 1st Combat Camera Squadron dedicated the video on the 83rd to the crew of that aircraft, which was using the callsign Jolly 51 at the time.

But even when the HH-60Ws come online, if the comments from the 83rd in Afghanistan are any indication, there may be some in the Air Force’s combat search and rescue community who are still pining for the power and capacity an HH-47 could have offered, whether it would be overkill for typical missions or not.

Contact the author: jtrevithickpr@gmail.com

Last week, the hilarious Jason Calacanis excerpted a chapter from Angel, a book he wrote about investing in Silicon Valley and about why he passed on Theranos, the blood testing company whose technology was recently revealed to be fraudulent garbage. He explains how investors were tricked and placated by great public relations, and the whole farce wasn't exposed until one skeptic went to a Walgreens to find that the machines didn't work at all. In fact, Walgreens brought Theranos into stores without even testing the hardware.

Sound familiar?

Two weeks ago, The Drive published "The Human Driving Manifesto," in which I claimed there was absolutely no evidence self-driving cars were safer than humans—at least not yet—and that we have a moral obligation to improve human driving safety even regardless.

Little did I know how prescient that would turn out to be.

Yesterday I wrote "Elaine Herzberg's Death Isn't Uber's Tragedy. It's Ours," in which I called out the hypocrisy of a country that tolerates 100 deaths by human drivers a day, but won't tolerate one by machine. I was referring, of course, to the tragic death of Elaine Herzberg, who was struck and killed by a self-driving Uber test vehicle this past Sunday in Tempe, Arizona, just one of ten pedestrians killed in that state last week.

I was trying to give Uber the benefit of the doubt. I was wrong.

Not only was I wrong, but The Human Driving Manifesto—which I jokingly wrote in response to the ever increasing storm of self-driving clickbait—was more accurate than I ever could have guessed, because now that the Tempe police have release dashcam footage of the fatal crash, all of the following points are perfectly clear:

1. Uber is guilty of killing Elaine Herzberg.
2. Uber's hardware and/or software failed.
3. Many people at Uber need to be fired.
4. The Arizona officials who greenlit testing need to resign.
5. One or more people need to be prosecuted.
6. The SAE Automation Classification System is vague and unsafe.
7. Uber is the Theranos of self-driving.
8. Volvo—one of the few car makers that truly cares about safety—is innocent and shouldn't be in bed with their craven opposites.

Even if you believe self-driving cars may someday reduce road fatalities—and I do believe that—this dashcam video is an icepick in the face of the argument that anyone at Uber gives a damn about anyone's safety, including that of their own test drivers.

I've long suspected that 99% of claims from self-driving companies were BS, but I didn't think it was this bad:

This is a catastrophe for Uber. It's also a catastrophe for the Tempe police, who were wrong when they said Herzberg's death was "likely unavoidable" because she "abruptly darted out in front of the car."

A slow moving pedestrian at night—well beyond human line of sight—is precisely what radar and Lidar sensors are supposed to see. This is precisely the type of crash self-driving cars are designed to prevent.

Uber blew it.

Almost $80 billion has been invested in self-driving cars, billions of it by Uber (a company that knows no shame), all of it based on the narrative that machines will be safer than people. Self-driving companies like Uber—none of which want to share data on their actual progress—have been flowing like water to states like Arizona and Nevada, where the risk-friendly and regulation-averse whores in government have welcomed them with open wallets.

If safety is the goal, then one would assume the development of safety technologies would maximize safety at every turn, literally and figuratively.

Not at Uber.

The Fatal Dashcam Video

Based on the video, Uber's self-driving car—in which a "safety" driver was present—is actually less safe than the average human driver in a stock Volvo fresh off the showroom floor.

The worst part? The crash can't be blamed on one or even two people. It's clearly the fault of countless people whose names we don't yet know, all of whom should go down in the history of self-driving as supporting actors in the most expensive and disastrous show of the self-driving season. In the theater of shame that has been Uber, that's saying a lot.

Let's start at the site of the accident, and ask some questions about responsibility. There's a lot to go around.

The Victim

Elaine Herzberg was jaywalking. It was dark. She was struck and killed by a car at or near the speed limit. Had it been any other car driven by a human, legal responsibility would almost certainly fall on the victim.

But that's not what happened. Elaine Herzberg was killed by a machine presumed to meet a higher standard, a standard its creators refuse to divulge, and its supporters take on faith.

Sound familiar? Then I've got some blood-testing technology to sell you.

Human standards are pathetic in America, but at least they exist. We could raise them tomorrow for a fraction of the $80 billion spent on self-driving cars. We could also invest in safety automation that works brilliantly in aviation, but I've already written that article.

Uber needs to answer for this.

How about that safety driver?

The "Safety" Driver

What is the purpose of a safety driver? To take control—whether it's steering or braking—in order to prevent an impact the self-driving car cannot. That didn't happen here. Why not? Partially because it was at night and the headlights may not have illuminated Herzberg until it was too late, and partially because the safety driver wasn't paying attention. The safety driver doesn't appear to have applied the brakes until after the impact, further indicating lack of readiness. I'm not convinced this particular "safety" driver could have done better even in daylight. Her eyes are glued to whatever device is in her hand.

The safety driver certainly bears some moral responsibility, and depending on the nature of her employment contract, she may bear some legal responsibility as well.

And that's before we know anything about what kind of training, if any, Uber gives its "safety" drivers.

Oh, did I mentioned that the driver had a history of traffic violations dating back to 1998? And that Uber claimed she passed all background checks? Uber, you've got a minimum standard problem.

The New York Times suggested the driver might have been at fault because her hands weren't hovering above the steering wheel, "which is what most backup drivers are instructed to do because it allows them to take control of the car quickly in the case of an emergency."

I've never heard that, although I often do it while using Tesla Autopilot, which is only a semi-autonomous system. If you don't place your hands on the Tesla's wheel periodically, Autopilot disengages.

What is supposed to happen in a self-driving Uber test car? I can't wait for that courtroom revelation.

Uber's Self-Driving Division

Some days I really feel for new CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, who seems to be a good guy who perhaps deserves better than the deepening pit left him by Kalanick. On the other hand, Wikipedia says he's paid $96.5M a year, so one would think Uber can afford a sufficient number of experts, ethicists, and engineers to run a professional self-driving car program. One would also think Dara would know what questions to ask of his own team, and whom to hire.

Think again. If you want ethics, hire Sterling Anderson, co-founder of Aurora.

The more you know about self-driving cars, the more pathetic the video appears, and the worse it looks for Uber's management, all the way to the top.

If the Uber safety driver's job is to monitor the road to prevent an impact, what measures did Uber take to ensure they do so? The answer would seem to be none, despite having an interior video camera. Is this video ever reviewed, even after an uneventful drive? If not, why not? Is the video live-streamed back to Uber? If so, is anyone watching it? If not, why not? Uber obviously has some image recognition and machine learning capabilities. Are they using it on the footage to determine safety driver awareness? If not, why not?

Software from startups like Affectiva can interpret human facial activity in real time. Autoliv demonstrated similar software at CES three months ago. Cadillac offers a Driver Monitoring System (DMS) on the CT6 as part of their excellent SuperCruise semi-autonomous system. When Dave Maher and I broke the Cannonball Run record cross-country, we had a great analog safety solution: the second person monitors the driver's condition and looks for objects in the road with a pair of gyro-stabilized binoculars.

Our Cannonball safety system looked like this:

It did not look like THIS:

When lives are at stake, it pays to be prepared.

Any of these might have solved the Uber's safety driver awareness problem, and may even have saved Herzberg's life. Maybe. We'll never know. Did the Uber test vehicle include such a system? It clearly didn't have a second person. If not, why not?

The Uber Car

Did the Uber brake? It doesn't appear that it did. If not, why not?

The Volvo XC90 has Automatic Emergency Braking (AEB), which — under optimal conditions — would be triggered by some combination of forward radar and camera. I've tested it, and it's pretty good. It would appear to have been deactivated so as to allow for unimpeded testing of Uber's self-driving suite. If not, why didn't it work? If so, what measures did Uber take to ensure braking in the event the self-driving system being tested failed?

The Uber self-driving system being tested has radar, Lidar and camera sensors;

1. The camera should have seen Herzberg right before impact. If not, why not?
2. The Lidar should have seen Herzberg beyond line-of-sight. If not, why not?
3. The radar should have seen Herzberg beyond line-of-sight. If not, why not?
4. If any of the sensors were defective, did they have backups? If not, why not?
5. If none of the sensors saw Herzberg, why doesn't the vehicle have a FLIR thermal night vision camera? The Cadillac CT6 has a great one. I installed one on my Cannonball BMW M5 12 years ago.

NEWS FLASH: Lidar isn't "the secret sauce." FLIR cameras are, and self-driving cars are probably going to need them.

Assuming the radar and lidar sensors saw Herzberg—which is almost certain, unless one or both were defective—that would have been sufficient to achieve "quorum", which is when a sufficient number of sensors in a self-driving car agree that an object lies in its path and decision must be made.

An object like a pedestrian, for example.

Was there a quorum? If not, why not? If so, why didn't the vehicle brake or steer away? It certainly would appear to have been able to do one or the other.

But hold on a minute. Every one of those sensors has individual sensitivity settings. In other words, two cars with identical sensors might behave completely differently. Was this vehicles' sensor sensitivity settings different from others? If so, why?

Are you starting to get the picture? No ONE thing went wrong. A LOT of things went wrong. A LOT of people signed off on a series of decisions, with cascading and terrible consequences.

But wait. There's more.

The brilliant AV attorney Jim McPherson—or @SafeSelfDrive on Twitter—suggested that the Uber did see Herzberg, and might have made a decision based on the Trolley Problem. In other words, the Uber may have determined that striking Herzberg was less dangerous to the safety driver than attempting an evasive maneuver.

What is going on? Who is in charge at Uber? Has anyone at Uber determined what best practices are supposed to be for testing self-driving cars? If so, is there an actual handbook? If not, why not?

How many other self-driving companies are testing with flawed practices? Or no practices at all?

The City of Tempe

How about those Tempe city planners and their anti-pedestrian designs? Why are the crosswalks so far apart? Why are there so few street lights? Have they made any attempts to reduce/prevent similar crashes?

The State of Arizona

What about the state of Arizona? Who greenlit any of this? Did they ask the questions I've posed here? I'm not an engineer, but I know what questions to ask. If state officials didn't, why didn't they? How much are Uber and the rest of the industry investing in states like Arizona?

How much are they donating to the campaigns of the officials making allowing them to operate on public roads?

The Department of Transportation

Let's take it to the top. Why doesn't Elaine Chao, the head of the US Department of Transportation, know the SAE Automation levels off the top of her head? Why are so many members of Congress buying gold-plated kneepads for their meetings with self-driving lobbyists?

The Future

How many more people do self-driving cars have to kill before we have common sense regulation?

A lot more, I think. A society that tolerates 40,000 deaths a year due to human driving will probably put up with a lot more collateral damage, as long as the dead are carless, or better yet homeless. In this country, that's practically the same thing.

I hope someone delivers self-driving cars, someday. I suspect that day just became a lot further off than anyone hoped.

All those people cool with justifying additional deaths trying to get there seem to have forgotten history. There's a reason it's illegal to perform medical experiments without patient consent. Heard of the Nuremberg Code? It was a response to German and Japanese testing on POW's during World War 2.

If you want to test on public roads, you need to be transparent about it. We already have millions of humans honing their wretched skills. Keep the machines off the streets until they're ready. Invest in better simulation. Declare a safety standard, and prove you can meet it.

Uber is the Facebook of transportation and the Theranos of self-driving cars, and I suspect their technological house of cards is a lot weaker than even this video suggests. I also suspect they're not alone, which is why I'm taking the Human Driving Association out of the hobby phase.

If we want to support technology that can help save lives, today, read our Manifesto and join our mailing list. We're just getting started, but someone has to fight for transparency, safety and common sense regulation for cars, whether human or machine-driven. The industry is clearly incapable of policing itself, and the alternative is more Elaine Herzbergs.

Solutions For Uber's CEO

Uber bears moral, ethical, civil and potentially criminal responsibility for Elaine Herzberg's death. So do the politicians who allowed this self-driving theater to unfold.

Dara, cut your losses, cancel your program and license Aurora's tech. Or Waymo's. Then Uber needs to write a HUGE check to a good cause. Start with Elaine Herzberg's family. How about the homeless of San Francisco you must see every day? Or the homeless of Tempe? Maybe take a trip there in between the upcoming trial and the congressional hearings you've got coming.

Here's an idea: professional driving training for all human Uber drivers. Show us your safety record is better than anyone's. You could save lives within months. You could even raise prices. If the government won't raise human licensing standards, maybe the private sector should.

Now there's an idea I can get behind.

Alex Roy—angel investor, Editor-at-Large for The Drive, Host of The Autonocast, co-host of /DRIVE on NBC Sports, author of The Driver and Founder of the Human Driving Association—has set numerous endurance driving records, including the infamous Cannonball Run record. You can follow him on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

There are two kinds of tragedies: those from which nothing is learned, and those that lead to change. Now that a pedestrian has been killed by a self-driving car, let’s dispense with the fiction that safety is a primary motivation in their development. Before Elaine Herzberg’s body was cold, the self-driving lobby raced to massage the narrative: you can’t make an omelette without brea—

You know the rest. Disgusting. These people should be ashamed.

You know who else should be ashamed? Those rushing to condemn self-driving cars. Why? Because nine other human beings were struck and killed by human-driven cars in Arizona just in the last week, and none of Uber's critics said a word.

Elaine Herzberg's death isn't Uber's tragedy, it's ours.

In a country wracked by binary thinking and clickbait-driven media run by whores, a shining beacon of truth must be lit and held high when tragedy strikes. We do not yet know all the facts of Herzberg’s death, but we can see its contours, and we know that all ten deaths are part and parcel of the same tragedy, which is one of dehumanization.

If evil is rooted in the dehumanization of others, then both sides of the self-driving debate are guilty. Uber, for financing The Producers of self-driving, a slapped-together farce whose true cost isn’t borne by the investors but by those chained to their seats for a show they didn’t sign up for. The Luddites, for confusing the privilege to drive with the right to do so, then pretending safety is a feature you buy rather than a condition you strive for.

Everyone wants agency but not responsibility, the benefits but not the costs, the glory but not the grit.

The omelette-breakers—comprised of virtually everyone in self-driving except Waymo—would have us believe money can shorten the timeline to safety. The Luddites would have us believe one death by experimental machine is worse than 40,000 by human hands.

Neither side cared about Elaine Herzberg until Monday morning.

It didn’t take long before we learned Elaine Herzberg was homeless, not as context, but as de facto justification for her death. We all know code when we see it. Instead of hoodie, we get plastic bags. What kind of person walks a bicycle covered in plastic bags in the middle of the night in Tempe, Arizona? In a city designed for cars, in a state designed for cars, in a country whose culture is defined by cars?

Someone who has never mattered to human drivers, or stories like this would be at the top of CNN every night.

Sadly, Elaine Herzberg didn’t matter to self-driving developers, either. She may not even have had a phone, and if she did, she wasn’t summoning an Uber to get anywhere. Elaine Herzberg wasn’t in the target user demographic.

Based on the public relations campaign being waged even as we speak, Elaine Herzberg was collateral damage, not only because she was homeless, but because she was car-less. She was jaywalking, from a median where she shouldn’t have been, where the city of Tempe had laid a beautiful paved walkway with a sign saying No Crossing in a city where crosswalks are hundreds of feet apart. Designed for cars, by car people, in a state without an adequate support system, in a country unwilling to address mental health.

I’m not just talking about the schizophrenia or depression afflicting so many of our homeless. I’m talking about the elation untrained drivers feel until they learn physics the hard way, often at the expense of others. The elation investors and idealists feel when they see even a glimmer of a self-driving utopia on the horizon, even if they have to sacrifice the lives of strangers to get there.

Sacrificing people, whether to learn lessons, or in spite of them, is wrong.

These are but two faces of the same dehumanizing logic: either road deaths don’t matter, or they do and self-driving cars are the solution. If road deaths don’t matter then you don’t deserve a seat at the self-driving debate. If they do, then we need an Autonomous Hippocratic Oath.

That’s called regulation.

What’s the right amount? It’s more than we have now, which is basically zero. It’s actually near zero for humans as well, at least in this country. That must change, but the inception point for high human licensing standards may have passed, whereas that day for self-driving cars is here. Right now. We have a choice, because it's being debated in Washington as I write this.

If self-driving cars are intended to be safer than humans, then they must be held to a higher standard. What is that standard, and how can self-driving developers meet it?

We start by having honest conversations about safety, human driving, and self-driving cars.

The responsibility for Elaine Herzberg’s death starts with the leadership of self-driving car companies, 99 percent of whom have exaggerated if not outright lied about their capabilities and timelines. If they can deploy self-driving cars in the next five years, their areas of operation will be so limited and their propagation rate so low as to be irrelevant to the majority of people alive today.

Next in line are the self-driving whores, shills, and “experts” who sprouted from soil well fertilized by VC and OEM dollars, not one of whom has a near-term solution for reducing road deaths, other than hiring them to speak at conferences.

Then we have the media idiots conflating semi-autonomous with autonomous, and the whores and clickbait mills like Business Insider, all pumping the imminent arrival of self-driving cars.

We have the politicians with their gold-plated kneepads begging companies like Uber to come to Arizona to escape the evil clutches of California regulators who are “stifling” competition. You know else allegedly stifled competition? Safety advocates who bitched and moaned about seat belts. And airbags.

What kind of tragedy will Elaine Herzberg’s death be?

If it is to be more than a speed bump on the way to Uber’s IPO, we must all look past panaceas and embrace realistic solutions that can make a difference in the near- and mid-term:

1. If you want to reduce traffic, invest in mass transit and infrastructure
2. If you want to reduce pollution, invest in bike lanes, e-bikes, and hybrid and electric vehicles
3. If you want to improve safety, read this, then read the Human Driving Manifesto, then join the Human Driving Association (for free)

We don’t know how long before self-driving cars will match or exceed human safety, but we do know that lies kill people. The lies car manufacturers told us about Takata airbags, GM ignition switches, and Dieselgate. The lies we tell ourselves every time we let a stranger drive us home, or take our kids to school. America needs a reality check.

Ignore the lies, hot takes, and press releases. Call out BS when you see it. Don’t be afraid of controversy. Pay for real journalism. Demand transparency from self-driving technology companies. Go to a professional driving school. Don’t vote for politicians lining up their post-government consulting jobs with self-driving companies.

There are two ways to see technology; as a means, or as an end. As a means, technology empowers and augments us, every failure a lesson learned. As an end, technology enslaves us, every failure rationalized as serving a higher goal.

Self-driving cars aren't a goal. They’re not even a solution. Self-driving cars are just the newest, shiniest, untested item in a big box of unloved old tools whose use we’ve neglected to master. You can’t fix leaky pipes with a gold-plated hammer—even a self-hammering gold-plated hammer.

I’m all for technology, but only technology that works. I’m also for saving lives. We can save lives without technology, today. We could save even more lives with human-centric semi-autonomous technology, tomorrow.

Or we can wait. Wait and swallow the cactus of self-driving propaganda for however many decades it takes for them to become ubiquitous, slowly replacing 40,000 human-driven deaths with 4,000 autonomous ones.

Maybe. The day after tomorrow.

Or we can demand better, right now. Not only of the Ubers of the world, but of ourselves. The moral high ground is staked by those who embody what they demand of others. If Elaine Herzberg matters, then every life matters until Uber figures it out. There’s a good chance they’ll never figure it all out, in which case some humans will be driving, somewhere, forever.

Which means the nine people hit by human-driven cars in Arizona last week, whose names no one has bothered to research because humans killing other humans with cars is old hat, aren’t even close to the last.

Each and every one of us must take personal responsibility for our actions behind the wheel. If we don’t, and Uber does figure this out, there’s a chance human driving will be banned and Facebook will launch a self-driving car service, in which case we’re really screwed.

Why? Because if there's one thing that upsets people more than strangers dying, it's issues of privacy.

Based on prior behavior, Uber is already the Facebook of transportation, but that’s another story. Or maybe it’s this one; we’ll have to wait for the NTSB report to know for sure.

In the meantime, if Uber doesn't publicly release 100 percent of the data from this event, they should not be trusted. Their history is as shameful as some of the more rotten humans they would seek to replace. If they want us to place our faith in them, they need to earn it.

Which is exactly what we should expect of humans.

Alex Roy—angel investor, Editor-at-Large for The Drive, Host of The Autonocast, co-host of /DRIVE on NBC Sports, author of The Driver and Founder of the Human Driving Association—has set numerous endurance driving records, including the infamous Cannonball Run record. You can follow him on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Do you like driving? I do. It’s not about speed. It’s about freedom. It’s about choice. Car in the garage. Keys in hand. Hands on wheel. We choose where we go and when we go, and we choose how we get there. With the rise of self-driving cars, an army of experts would have us believe freedom and choice are a bad thing. From behind the banner of safety, they claim autonomous technology will save us from the tyranny and danger of human control. Their strategy is to claim that autonomous technology creates an either/or scenario where human driving is in conflict with safety.

That strategy is based on a lie.

Despite a storm of clickbait media reports, there is still little evidence that self-driving cars are safer than humans. We don't know what "safe" or "safer" means. There is no government regulation defining a safety standard, nor has any self-driving car maker declared what that standard might be.

Unless self-driving car technology is demonstrably safer than humans—and even if it is—human freedom and choice must come first. We don’t need to sacrifice safety for freedom. The same technology that enables self-driving cars will allow humans to retain control within the safe confines of automation. Those that say otherwise seek to profit from reducing our freedoms, rather than make us safer while protecting them.

If our safety was the experts' first principle, the billions invested in self-driving cars would have gone to subsidizing free professional driving school, raising licensing standards, and making critical safety technologies like seat belts, airbags, ABS and automatic emergency braking (AEB) standard as soon as they were invented.

Safety? I give you Takata airbags, GM ignition switches, Pinto gas tanks, Ford Explorer tires, and Dieselgate.

The banner of "safety" may fly on the flagpole of autonomy, but it is raised by the hands of profit. Ironically, we already have autonomy, but it is organic autonomy, which isn’t as easy to monetize as machine autonomy. Organic autonomy—which is 100% human control over machines—has been increasingly exploited for profit in the form of onerous speed and traffic enforcement and discriminatory court fees, both of which are taxation by other means. Cloaked in the propaganda of self-driving cars, The War On Driving has now unzipped its pants to reveal its next phase: the frictionless monetization of autonomy by elimination of its organic component—that's us.

The very language of self-driving is slavery, not only to the idea that machines will be better than humans, but that we have nothing to add to the safety equation until they are. That language—as defined by the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE)—also assumes that there is no cathartic value to our safe and responsible control over a car, anywhere, at any speed.

The perfect car of the future isn’t one without a steering wheel. The perfect car of the future is self-driving when we allow it, and—if and when we choose to take the wheel—won’t let us harm anyone else.

“Perfect” systems are fallible, but so are we, which is why the best system must combine the best of human and machine intelligence. If self-driving cars demonstrably safer than humans ever arrive, they will do so in fits and starts, over many decades, which is why we must deploy partial automation, as it manifests, in harmony with human nature.

There are two schools of partial automation: the increasingly popular Series, which temporarily substitutes for humans without any demonstrable safety benefit and almost certainly reduces safety over time, and Parallel, which augments our abilities while protecting our freedoms.

Series automation is our enemy; Parallel automation is our ally.

In the meantime, we are free to start saving lives tomorrow, for far less than the billions (if not trillions) invested in a distant self-driving utopian future, if we choose to.

We choose to.

We cannot escape the march of technology, but we can channel it toward paths that strengthen rather than weaken us, expand our horizons rather than limit them, and guarantee that the car—once and still a symbol of freedom—doesn’t become a tool of the tyranny we seek to avoid.

To that end, I propose the following manifesto. We need to defend what we believe in while we have the chance. If we don't, we will surely lose the opportunity to have a voice at the table.

THE HUMAN DRIVING MANIFESTO

1. We Are Pro-Human, in pursuit of life, liberty and freedom of movement, by any means that does not infringe upon the safety of others.
   
   
2. We Are Pro-Technology, but only as a means, not an end. Technology is only as good as our understanding of it, and an incremental approach will save more lives in the near and long term while mitigating the second order consequences of an all-or-nothing approach.
   
   
3. We Are Pro-Safety, through a combination of improved drivers education, deployment of Advanced Drivers Assistance Systems (ADAS)—such as Automatic Emergency Braking (AEB) & Forward Collision Warning (FCW) Systems—and Parallel automation.
   
   
4. We Support Raising Driver Licensing Standards. Driving is a privilege, not a right. Earn it, keep it. Abuse it, lose it. Periodic retesting is essential. Education must include familiarization with the capabilities and limitations of new safety technologies.
   
   
5. We Support Defined Safety Standards & Transparency. "Safe" and "safer" must be defined, and claims by autonomous vehicle manufacturers and providers must be backed up by data shared publicly. If and when self-driving cars meet a regulatory safety standard, their deployment cannot infringe the public's freedom of movement.
   
   
6. We Are Pro-Steering Wheel. No vehicle should be deployed without a steering wheel, and the Parallel automation to prevent a human driver from making a mistake.
   
   
7. We Are Pro-Choice and Pro-Life. Pro-Choice in how people get from A to B, Pro-Life in the deployment of safety technologies that both save lives and preserve freedom, without which there is no quality of life.
   
   
8. We Support Fairness and Due Process in the creation and enforcement of traffic laws. Human drivers have the right to a fair trial, to discovery, to confront their accuser, to a trial by jury, and are innocent until proven guilty. We are opposed to arbitrary traffic stops, indiscriminate license plate data collection and retention, unwarranted search and seizure, and incentive-driven speed and safety enforcement.
   
   
9. We Support Freedom of Movement and Traffic Neutrality, guaranteeing free and open access to all transportation infrastructure regardless of income level, whether for human or self-driven cars, guaranteeing freedom of movement for all Americans, by whatever means.
   
   
10. We Are Pro-Privacy. All connected services should be opt-in, not opt-out. All vehicles, whatever the level of automation, must be capable of operating completely independent of any communications network. If and when connectivity is required — i.e. within a clearly defined geofence — any and all driver/passenger information should be automatically anonymized.
    
    
11. We Support New Classification Standards For Autonomous Vehicles, clarifying safety capabilities vs. human drivers, standardizing terminology for common functionalities, and the replacement of the SAE automation levels with a system whose language allows for alternative human-centric R&D paths.
    
    
12. We Are Pro-Constitutional Amendment, creating a right to drive, within the limits of safety technologies that do not infringe upon our freedom of movement.

Times are changing, and we must change with them. If we fail to embrace and control technologies that support our freedom, we will become slaves to those who would turn it against us.

We need an organization to lobby to defend human driving.

Want to join the fight? Join the Human Driving Association mailing list and help us defend freedom, choice and safety the right way. You can also follow the HDA on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook.

Want to learn more about why self-driving ubiquity isn't around the corner? Come to my SXSW presentation "Why Humans Won’t Ride Shotgun with Robo-Taxis" on Friday March 9.

Alex Roy — angel investor, Founder of the Human Driving Association, Editor-at-Large for The Drive, Host of The Autonocast, co-host of /DRIVE on NBC Sports, author of The Driver and Founder of Noho Sound — has set numerous endurance driving records around the world, including the infamous Cannonball Run record. You can follow him on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Even in tragedy, people are funny. I don’t mean haha funny. I’m talking about cognitive dissonance that makes me want to jaywalk on the Autobahn during rush hour, if only my sacrifice would get anyone to recognize the common ground we all share—or at least claim to. That’s the problem, of course. Everyone likes to claim the moral high ground, but seldom want to stand on it.

Which brings us to the hypocrisy around guns, self-driving cars and saving lives.

Let’s start with first principles. If there’s one thing everyone can agree on, it’s that any death that isn’t by natural causes is a bad thing. Ergo, anything that saves lives is a good thing.

This makes the gun control debate fascinating, because both sides claim to be operating from that same first principle. The NRA saves lives with more guns. Their opponents, by restricting them. Every year the debate rages, people die. In 2017, that number was 15,592, not including suicides.

That something must be done about guns is obvious, but the Second Amendment is a big, prickly cactus sliding further down America’s throat with every gun sold. If it’s going to be extracted, it’s going to take a lot of time, which means years of pain.

That something can be done about saving lives in general is also obvious, and it has nothing to do with guns. If your first principle is to save lives, then that needs to be a general principle you stand on at all times. If not, you’re a partisan hack, or ignorant, or both. There are no optics to morality. Given the opportunity to act, you must do so when and where confronted with the choice.

If we want to save lives, we need to talk about driving, which killed over 40,000 Americans last year—more than twice the numbers killed by guns.

The Parkland School Massacre killed 17 people. 109 were killed by in/by cars that same day.

That’s 5 Parkland massacres every day.

Here an icepick of truth for you:

Since 1968, 1,530,000 Americans have been killed by guns.
Since 1968, 2,130,000 Americans have been killed by/in cars.

There is no Second Amendment protecting the right to drive a car. Driving is a privilege, not a right. There is nothing preventing us from personally acting on or regulating away the overwhelming majority of road fatalities away, today.

Where are the politicians and regulators fighting to improve road safety in a serious way? They don’t exist. What is the NRA’s position on improving road safety? Nonexistent. What about the gun control camp? Nada.

What a bunch of hypocrites. You need a poncho to hide from the Niagara Falls of blood, sweat and tears shed around the gun debate, but Skip Barber Racing School still had to file for bankruptcy.

Skip Barber’s one-day “Teen Safety And Survival” school costs $995.

Don’t tell me it’s too expensive. I’ve been to enough funerals. The average casket costs $2000. Anyone standing by an open grave with a sign that said Time Machine could collect $995 before the first dirt hit the wood.

Self-Driving cars are not the answer

“But wait, Alex, aren’t self-driving cars right around the corner?”

Newsflash: they’re not. A few might be, in the next five years in a few places, but if you want to cut that 40,000 fatality figure by 99%, you’ve got to replace 100% of the 270M cars on the road in America today. Zero self-driving cars were sold last year. Zero will be sold this year. But 6.3 million human-driven passenger cars were sold in 2017, and their average lifespan is 11 years. Even if 100% of new cars were self-driving, it would take 24 years to replace every human-driven car on the road.

That’s a very optimistic timeline, because it assumes Level 5 cars—those go anywhere/anytime Wall-E pods absent steering wheels—show up in the near term. Not going to happen. The timeline to ubiquity? Somewhere between 50 years...and never.

Between now and that self-driving utopia, we have a long slog during which we can choose our battles. If saving lives is your first principle, then the moral path is the shortest one. That path is a total assault on road safety, today and every day, until driving is outlawed or technology saves it.

Instead we get a self-driving lobby as craven as the NRA, almost exclusively focused on all-or-nothing, blue sky solutions, promising a safer tomorrow while taking baby steps today. Legacy automakers talk a big game, but Tesla’s Autopilot has owned the semi-autonomous market space since late 2015. It took two more years for GM’s superior SuperCruise to show up on a single Cadillac model, and yet it went unmentioned in GM’s most recent investor report.

Billions continue to fertilize a self-driving tree that has barely sprouted, when for a fraction of the cost countless lives could be saved tomorrow. Maybe if Google donated even a fraction of their Waymo investment to launch a drivers's ed charity, I'd have more respect for them. “Saving lives” is the narrative of self-driving, but profit is the motive. Waymo isn’t a charity, nor are any of the dozens of startups who send me plans every week.

How to save lives today

No one cares about your safety more than you do, but that “personal responsibility” people talk about is meaningless unless you educate yourself as to what’s at stake. In between buying guns or protesting their availability, Googling “grisly car accident victims” will put you in the right mindset.

Here's a starter list for how to reduce the #1 killer in America that isn't a disease.

Wear your seatbelt, even in the backseat. If I have to explain it, you shouldn’t be in a car, let alone driving one. If seat belts didn’t work, race car drivers wouldn’t use them. If your friends won't wear them in the back, turn off the engine, sit, and wait.

Then let's mandate seatbelt interlocks. There's only one reason to oppose this. You don't want to save lives. Also, you don't love your children.

If you’re on a two-wheeler—even if it’s a bicycle—wear a helmet. I don’t care if you hurt yourself. I do care about the first responders diverted from helping more serious accidents, and victims of violent crime.

Report unsafe driving. Call 911. If you’re in a taxi or Uber driving like a jerk, get out and report them. Ride-hailing apps make this really easy. If the driver doesn't kill you, he or she may kill someone else.

Does your friend like to show off his driving skill and want you to come along? Unless it’s on a racetrack and he’s got a spare helmet—and even if he does—skip the ride. A real driver will ask you to watch their lap from the pits, then brag about their lap time. Everyone else is an amateur.

Let's suppose fully automatic weapons were legal nationwide. You wouldn't buy your kid an M249 with a 200 round ammo box as a first gun, would you? @Parents: unless you've invested real money in karting and/or your kid has already been scouted, don't buy them an M, AMG, S, V, F, or R, or basically anything with an extra letter. Make them earn it. I don't mean through skill, or even grades. Make them pay for it. A good work ethic often makes for good respect-for-life ethics.

Find and support politicians seeking to raise driving standards. The next generation of potential political candidates are marching right now for gun control. Where is the candidate fighting for road safety? Find them, or run for office yourself.

Buy winter tires. You don't have space to store a second set of tires? Boo hoo. Do you like having two arms and two legs? Make it work. All-seasons don't work in snow, but they have a magical ability to transport you to a cemetery. How many SUV’s and crossovers have you seen stranded in the winter? Every single one of them is driven by someone who literally does not care about their own safety, or that of those around them. Don’t ride with them, even if it means missing out on the party. You can't party if you're dead.

Don’t drink and drive, and don’t ride with people who do. De-friend people who do. I’ve even de-friended people who joke about doing it.

But wait, we already have breathalyzer interlocks for idiots who need them. I had a drinking problem years ago. Thank god I didn't drive. Why take the chance? Let's install breathalyzer interlocks on all vehicles. Safety is a just a law away, and new technologies may allow us to do away with the breathalyzer component.

Read “We Need An NRA For Human Driving.” I’m not suggesting we support human driving privileges at the expense of safety. I’m suggesting that, in the absence of constitutional protections for driving, a lobbying group by and for enthusiasts must deploy a common sense approach to maximizing safety. Licensing standards must be raised. Retesting must be mandatory. We need more lifetime driving bans. We need zero tolerance for unsafe driving.

Join the Human Driving Association. It’s nothing more than a mailing list...for now. But sometime soon, once the self-driving lobby generates enough momentum to restrict human driving privileges, we will be funneled into vehicles whose safety is determined by code. I’m all for self-driving technology that’s safer than humans, but until it’s proven—and no standards currently exist—the onus is on us, which brings us to...

Drivers education, which is a disgrace. Just ask Sully. The solution? Sign up for professional driving school. The most expensive half day course is cheaper than a funeral. It’s also a lot cheaper than the upgrade wheels, bodykits, wings and performance packages the instagram kids love so much. Worshipping performance over drivers’ skill in using it is the difference between children and adults.

We are not what we buy. We are what we do, when it counts.

We need to reduce gun deaths, but talking about gun solutions while doing nothing about driving — which kills more than twice as many people as guns — is morally bankrupt. You don’t need to wait to help save lives. Help chip away at our road safety problem today. I hate cliches, but this one is true: when it comes to road safety, you’re either part of the solution, or part of the problem, because there will be 5 Parkland Massacres on American roads today and every day until something is done.

You are pro-death or anti-death.

Pick your side.

Alex Roy—angel investor, Editor-at-Large for The Drive, host of The Autonocast, co-host of /DRIVE on NBC Sports, author of The Driver—has set numerous endurance driving records, including the infamous Cannonball Run record. You can follow him on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

U.S. Special Operations Command is planning to buy a small number of conversion kits from Swiss gun maker Sig Sauer to turn existing M4A1 carbines into new MCX Rattler personnel defense weapons, or PDWs. This purchase is in response to the command’s nearly year-old requirement for a tiny assault rifle able to fire both .300 Blackout and 5.56x45mm rounds, which we at The War Zone were first to report.

The U.S. Army, which is managing the contract on behalf of Special Operations Command (SOCOM), announced the plan on FedBizOpps, the U.S. government’s central contracting website, on Feb. 1, 2018. The proposed deal, which the service expects to finalize by the end of March 2018, will include 10 complete “MCX PDW” upper receiver groups in .300 Blackout and equal number of 5.56x45mm barrels. The notice and its attached documentation never specifically mention the Rattler trade name, but the caliber, 5.5-inch barrel length, and mention of a thin, side-folding “skeleton” buttstock are a perfect match for the design that Sig Sauer debuted at the annual SHOT Show trade show in Las Vegas, Nevada in January 2018.

“Sample systems are needed quickly to be used in formal combat evaluations,” according to one document, outlining the Army’s justification for handing a contract directly to Sig Sauer without a formal competition. “The current requirement is for 10 kits that will be used in evaluations that will help shape future requirements that are anticipated to be competed in a full and open manner.”

U.S. government rules and regulations require that any agency looking to issue this type of sole-source contract has to present a written argument to justify why it cannot take the time to go through a traditional process. Though the Army posted a copy of this document online, it redacted the estimated total value of the contract, as well as a number of other details.

The documents do not say what unit or units will be evaluating the weapons, but the kits will go to the U.S. Navy’s Naval Surface Warfare Center in Crane, Indiana. This facility routinely supports the research and development of new small arms systems for the SEALs, which sometimes filter down to special operations forces in other services.

According to the documents, technicians at Crane will use existing M4A1 carbine lower receivers as the starting point to build the complete weapons. However, the conversion kits should also work without any issue on lowers from other AR-15 and M16-pattern weapons or derivatives, such as Heckler and Koch's HK416, which is becoming increasingly popular with U.S. special operations forces and the U.S. Marine Corps, if necessary.

Like the HK416, the MCX series, including the Rattler, uses a physical gas piston to cycle the action rather than the AR-15/M16 series' direct impingement system. The latter arrangement blows propellant gasses straight into the inner workings of the gun, which can cause particulate matter to build up and jam the gun unless the shooter makes sure to routinely clean their weapon.

From the purchase order, it is also clear that whoever the special operators in question are, they’re interested in testing more than one potential PDW configuration, making use of the already modular nature of Sig Sauer's MCX family. In addition to the Rattler’s ultra-lightweight buttstock, the deal would include 10 standard full-size versions.

The evaluators will have access to a sound suppressor Sig Sauer has specially developed for the .300 Blackout round, well as the company’s SRD762, which is available with a quick detach mounting system. The latter type works with a variety of different .30 caliber and smaller ammunition types, according to its website.

The last major items in the order are Wilcox BOSS 300 non-magnifying optics, which are calibrated for the .300 Blackout’s ballistics, and Sig Sauer Juliet 4x magnifiers. With both system available and the magnifier on a quick detach mount, a special operator could easily go from having a sight ideal for close-quarters combat to one that gives them the ability to make accurate shots at longer distances.

And though the purchase also includes barrels in 5.56x45mm, the .300 Blackout's characteristics are very much at the core of the Rattler's design and SOCOM's requirements. Advanced Armament Corporation (AAC) first created the Blackout round in cooperation with Remington in the late 2000s.

AAC goal was to design a new ammunition type for AR-15 and M16-type weapons and derivatives thereof that would be quiet, but still relatively accurate and powerful, even in a gun with an extremely short barrel and a sound suppressor. The 5.56x45mm round performs poorly out of short barrel firearms to begin with.

AAC originally crafted two basic types of ammunition under the .300 Blackout moniker, the first being a supersonic 125 grain round that had similar ballistics to the Soviet 7.62x39mm cartridge, along with a much heavier 200 grain subsonic type specifically for firearms with sound suppressors. The market for .300 Blackout has since grown to the point that other manufacturers offer different loads with various combinations of bullets and powder charges, which offer different characteristics in certain conditions.

Testing showed that an AR-15 in .300 Blackout with a 9” barrel produced the same muzzle energy as a standard 5.56x45mm M4A1 carbine with its 14.5-inch barrel, according to a 2012 AAC presentation. The company posited that a gun in .300 Blackout with a 9-inch barrel version would still be useful at a range of just over 480 yards while Colt's 5.56x45mm M4 Commando, with an 11.5-inch barrel, is only reliably effective out to around 440 yards.

The .300 Blackout cartridge do generally have heavier, slower-moving bullets than typical 5.56x45mm loads, highlighting that the ammunition might be best suited to the PDW role or other shorter-range combat. That larger projectiles also give the Blackout rounds better performance against harder cover, such as wood panels, car doors, and auto glass, which could easily send many lighter 5.56mm bullets off course or shatter them entirely.

On top of that, since 5.56x45mm to .300 Blackout share the same case head and taper, its generally not difficult to switch from one to the other, which was a key part of SOCOM's initial requirement. In AR-15 and M16-pattern guns it is as simple as swapping out the barrel. Magazines for one ammunition type will work for the other, as well.

What all this means is that a PDW-type weapon in this caliber gives special operators a very useful tool in very confined spaces that also reasonably effective against enemy forces at longer ranges if the situation were to change suddenly. Sig Sauer has been heavily focusing on the idea of a large amount of firepower in a compact package in its marketing materiel for the Rattler and other MCX versions, which includes a series of four slick Hollywood-esque short films.

The fourth of these, titled “Tango Down,” features fictional special operators working discreetly in stereotypical Middle Eastern setting armed with the PDW type. You can watch the full clip below.

“You gotta understand that if anything bad happens, it’s going to be over with before anybody can help you,” the commander says at the mission briefing. “So, I need you to roll as heavy as you possibly can without blowing your cover.”

As of 2015, U.S. special operations forces units were reportedly already using a larger version of the MCX in .300 Blackout, nicknamed the Black Mamba. That weapon, which SOCOM procured as part of its “Low Visibility Assault Weapon” program, had a nine-inch barrel, though, according to Guns of the Special Forces, 2001-2015, by Leigh Neville.

That prior experience may have given Sig Sauer an advantage, at least in this initial deal. AAC had already made a similar weapon, known as the Honey Badger, which seemed tailored to the SOCOM requirement for an ultra-compact assault rifle.

Belgian gunmaker FN Herstal now offers a PDW-sized version of its SCAR series, which American special operators already use, but not in .300 Blackout. German firm Heckler and Koch has a version of its HK416 and HK 417 family in that caliber, the HK337, but again with a nine-inch barrel that would be too long for SOCOM’s stated needs. There’s nothing to say that either of those companies couldn’t reconfigure those weapons to meet the parameters for the special operations PDW, though.

The Army makes it clear in the contracting documents that this small buy and the subsequent combat evaluation are intended only to provide information to help refine the existing requirements. At the same time, having a system already ready for large-scale production could put Sig Sauer in a good position to win that subsequent contract, too.

“The United States Special Operations Command has identified an urgent operational need that is jeopardizing lives and safety as this new capability is being developed,” the Army’s justification says in no uncertain terms. “Only one respondent, Sig Sauer, has a PDW kit that is commercially available, meets the technical requirements of the sources sought, and is ready for delivery to conduct a combat evaluation in order to determine a solution for a M4A1 conversion kit.”

The contracting documents do not say how long the combat evaluation will last, but that it will come 60 to 90 days after the Army finalizes the deal. There’s also no clear timeline for how long it might take SOCOM to take whatever data it gathers and starts the formal competition.

We at The War Zone will definitely be keeping our eyes out for news of those developments as the year goes on.

An aircraft that represents a missing technological link between Lockheed's abortive "Tier III-" RQ-3 Darkstar unmanned penetrating and long-loitering spy aircraft and the company's history making RQ-170 Sentinel is now coming to light. This previously unknown (to the public) flying-wing drone was built by Lockheed Skunk Works in 1999, shortly after the RQ-3 program vanished.

This new program, which aimed to prove rapid manufacturing technologies and penetrating aerial reconnaissance capabilities, as well as the aerodynamic validity of a relatively small, tailless, swept-wing drone, was dubbed the X-44A and first took to the skies in 2001.

The shadowy aircraft's designation is outright confusing as the X-44 "Manta" is largely known as a program that aimed to test a tailless manned aircraft design that emanated from the same period of time. This notional aircraft would use thrust vectoring for primary flight control, with the objective being to realize new speed, fuel efficiency, and maneuverability capabilities with such a design, as well as to demonstrate simpler and cheaper forms of aircraft structures production.

This USAF and NASA led program was supposedly cancelled around the turn of the millennium with some conceptual art being all that is left to show for it, which mainly includes drawings of what appears to be a tailless F-22 with an expanded trapezoidal wing.

It is unclear at this time how Lockheed's fat little flying-wing drone also ended up with the same X-44 designation, but there doesn't seem to be any direct relation between the two programs.

A patent dated 1996 and belonging to Lockheed has been identified as the real X-44A's design, or at least very close to it. The X-44's skin is supposedly made out of nano-carbon fiber and it's powered by a Williams F112 turbojet engine. The F112 powerplant is used in cruise missiles, such as the stealthy AGM-129, but it has also been used in other unmanned technology demonstrators, like the McDonnell Douglas's X-36 and Boeing's X-50.

Size wise, the X-44 has a wingspan of approximately 30 feet, making it roughly half the size of its RQ-170 successor. The airframe is modular in nature with a potato-like fuselage that could carry various sensors. It is also likely that the aircraft could have its wings detached for transport, similar to the RQ-170. The aircraft is guided by traditional control surfaces along its trailing edge and it features rakes, squared-off wingtips.

Aside from doing independent research for Lockheed Martin, the X-44 was apparently also part of some sort of competition between Boeing, Northrop Grumman, and Lockheed, the outcome of which remains unknown but it seems as if Lockheed lost. The goal of that competition is unknown, but it could have been an early semi-disposable stealthy drone program very similar to the Air Force Research Lab's current Low-Cost Attritable Strike Demonstration (LCASD) initiative.

The aircraft wears the insignia below, a mysterious crest that has become popular in aerospace-defense crowds after being presented initially in Trevor Peglen's book I Could Tell You But Then You Would Have to be Destroyed by Me: Emblems from the Pentagon's Black World.

The crest features a black manta ray, which is interesting because "Black Manta" was the nickname for the aforementioned canceled X-44 program. It reads pottus est melius quam satis bene: "Making something better than just good enough"—this could be in reference to the manufacturing techniques used in the X-44's creation. Indigo, Delta, Kilo seems to be a reference to "I Don't Know," underlining the deep classification of the program. The number one and constellation of stars remain a mystery. Usually six stars signify Area 51 as a primary test location, but in this case there are 11.

In recent years, the Skunk Works X-44 was refitted and used to evaluate visual cueing systems for the Navy's upcoming Carrier Based Aerial Refueling System (CBARS) tanker drone program. Lockheed, which hasn't yet shown off its entrant into the CBARS tender, faces stiff competition from General Atomics and Boeing.

What the X-44 provides us with is a new evolutionary stepping stone in a lineage of aircraft that collectively represent the Skunk Works' quiet dive into the high-end unmanned space—a space that became increasingly promising in the early 2000s.

The type likely served as one of the cruder forerunners to a family of stealth unmanned aircraft systems, some of which are undoubtedly still cloaked in secrecy. But one can clearly see how it helped spawn the P175 Polecat demonstrator, which had similar program goals and overall similar design, but on a much larger and more advanced scale.

Other aircraft also likely existed during the early and mid 2000 that are part of this family of clandestine flying-wings courtesy of the Skunk Works. Following the attacks on 9/11, a penetrating and persistent reconnaissance capability would have been a top priority, and it is widely understood that a similar clandestine aircraft system belonging to Lockheed participated in Operation Iraqi Freedom. This was likely a semi-operational forerunner to the RQ-170 Sentinel, which first appeared publicly at Kandahar airfield in Afghanistan in 2007.

The RQ-170 Sentinel in particular, which helped in finding and finishing-off Osama Bin Laden, kept tabs on the Iran's nuclear program, and famously fell into the hands of Iran in 2011, not to mention also likely flying missions over other hostile territories such as North Korea, is a known operational benefactor of the X-44A's existence, and there surely are others. You can learn all about the intriguing and mysterious saga of America's stealthy unmanned combat air vehicle (UCAV) programs and why they disappeared in this past TWZ super feature.

Hopefully the Skunk Works will post photos of this intriguing aircraft and more information on its backstory in the near future. That being said, the logic behind keeping it classified for so long is quite puzzling considering its simplicity and diminutive size compared to high-end unmanned systems we know of today.

Above all else, the nearly two decade old X-44A serves a reminder that there is so much technology and history buried in the deeply classified "black" world that we have yet to learn about.

We have reached out to Lockheed about the X-44 but have not heard back. We will keep you updated if we receive more information on this historic aircraft.

Contact the author: Tyler@thedrive.com

Automotive YouTuber/entertainer Doug DeMuro recently wrote the dumbest, most misguided and irresponsible article I've read since Motor Trend's foolish Audi A8 story. That's saying a lot, because the landscape of idiotic self-driving media coverage is vast.

But DeMuro's example isn't funny this time, because it's not just people's wallets at stake. It's their lives.

DeMuro just published "7 Best Semi-Autonomous Systems Available Right Now" on Auto Trader—a publication that can afford to hire someone with actual technical knowledge to cover topics outside its wheelhouse—and it's everything wrong about legacy media's auto-tech content, all wrapped up in 1,000 words of press release "journalism".

Guiding people toward spending thousands of dollars on options the author has neither tested nor understands is unethical. That people have been killed due to such misunderstandings makes it immoral. That DeMuro claims one of the systems allows fully autonomous driving is stupidly dangerous.

The bigger the audience, the greater the responsibility to tell the truth. We are what we do when it counts. Doug has millions of subscribers; laziness and/or stupidity are not excuses. Lives are at stake. It counts.

I've dismantled Doug DeMuro before for attempting actual journalism, which is not his forte. No one likes getting speeding tickets, yet people couldn't get enough of DeMuro's bucket of ignorant slop claiming Waze could replace radar detectors. Or how about the time he published his Tesla Model 3 review, before anyone else, and managed to reveal nothing of value about the car?

He and his defenders claim he's not a journalist, but an entertainer. I totally agree. DeMuro is an entertainer. His videos get millions of views. He might even be the millennial Jay Leno, twenty years before the big money and bigger car collection. The sad difference between DeMuro and Leno is that Leno doesn't pretend to be an expert on anything he doesn't know about.

This time, DeMuro's article qualifies as neither journalism nor entertainment. It's devoid of his usual humor, and there's no useful information. There is some data, however.

(Message to Doug: data ? information.)

Grouping seven behaviorally complex and notably differentiated semi-autonomous driving systems on a single "best" list is like saying every car with 300-400 horsepower is great, which is too stupid even for DeMuro to say. Well, maybe.

Technology is only as good as our understanding of it. Semi-autonomous driving systems are comprised of multiple safety sub-systems. How, when, and where those systems work, and whether they work in harmony, is everything.

No one has yet come up with a comprehensive method of testing and comparing the usefulness, safety, and efficacy of semi-autonomous driving systems. (I took a stab in my Cadillac SuperCruise vs Tesla Autopilot comparo, a comparison of two systems that required 7,000 words.) Mandatory criteria would have to include:

1. Hardware: Does it have Lidar? How many radars? What type? What's the range?
2. Software: Is it upgradeable? Does it have over-the-air (OTA) updates?
3. Driver Monitoring System (DMS): Does it have one? Does it include a camera?
4. Hands-off intervals: How long can you take your hands off the wheel? How long should you take your hands off the wheel?
5. Effectiveness: How good is lane-keeping? How well does it prevent cut-ins?
6. Comfort: Does it drive like a skilled or unskilled human?
7. Confidence: Does the system inspire confidence and encourage or discourage use?
8. Transition Warning System (TWS): How clear are warnings that tell the driver he must take control of the vehicle? How loud are they? How far in advance of takeover do they sound?
9. User Interface (UI): How is the system engaged/controlled?
10. Situational Awareness: Does it have a situational awareness display? What is displayed?
11. Operational Domain: Where does it work?

Without knowing the answers to these questions, recommending any such system to anyone is reprehensible.

DeMuro's review is reprehensible. Let's get into why. (DeMuro's text in italics.)

7 Best Semi-Autonomous Systems Available Right Now

There's no doubt about it: autonomous cars are coming. And while fully autonomous cars are undoubtedly still a few years away, several automakers are rolling out semi-autonomous systems that are getting ever closer to the idea of jumping inside the car and letting it take over from there.

Half-true. Autonomous cars—also known as SAE Level 4 or 5—are coming. But WTF does "...semi-autonomous systems that are getting closer to the idea of.." actually mean?

On an engineering level, there is no reason to believe that Level 2 or Level 3 semi-autonomous systems are a developmental path to deploying Level 4 or higher. Waymo, Google's self-driving spinoff, was so skeptical of the safety of semi-autonomous systems they decided to skip Level 3 altogether.

On a functional level, driving systems are either autonomous, or they're not. Humans are either in the loop, or they're not. Humans are either responsible, or they're not. Semi-autonomy doesn't change that. Just because a semi-autonomous system is engaged doesn't make the car self-driving, and it never relieves the driver of responsibility. The notion that even the best semi-autonomy gets one closer to true autonomy is the thinking that killed Josh Brown when his Tesla ran in that truck.

The next sentence is where Doug starts to go off the rails.

The seven systems we've listed below—all of which are out right now or are coming out very shortly—represent the best in autonomous driving technology you can buy today, even if they don't quite let you sleep or watch TV while you're cruising down the road.

The title says "7 Best Semi-Autonomous Systems Available Right Now", but DeMuro states some "are coming out shortly." If some are coming out shortly, how does Doug know those are among the best? Has he driven all these systems? Has he driven any of them? There's no evidence he has, nor is there any evidence he went on the press junkets where he might have learned more about them.

So these aren't necessarily the best, because responsibly rating something as "the best," or even among "the best," would require hands-on experience and meaningful comparison.

Audi Traffic Jam Pilot
Expected to be out late this year or early next year in the Audi A8 sedan, Traffic Jam Pilot isn't a fully autonomous technology that's designed to be used in all cases, but it's a system that can take over driving where you (likely) desire autonomous technology the most—in heavy traffic. Functional below 60 kilometers per hour (around 37 miles per hour), the system can steer, accelerate, brake and even come to a complete stop and start up again so you don't have to constantly move on and off the brakes and make minor adjustments to the steering wheel as you sit in bumper-to-bumper traffic. No word yet on whether you have to keep your hands on the wheel (or periodically touch the wheel) in order to keep the feature active, like some other systems.

This is either lifted directly from an Audi press release, or regurgitates one.

The last sentence appears to refer to what's called a Driver Monitoring System (DMS). I consider an active system, like Cadillac's SuperCruise camera that is always pointed at the driver, absolutely essential for safe hands-off use. Omission of such is a major safety issue mitigated only by a serious Transition Warning System (TWS) and shorter hands-off intervals, which Tesla has been evolving toward since their Autopilot was originally released in late 2015.

Doug admits he doesn't know whether Audi will include a DMS, and nothing is stated about the TWS, potential intervals, or any other criteria. The most important fact—that the Audi A8 includes a Lidar sensor, which many believe to be safety-critical—is omitted. Which means we don't even know if Audi's system is good, let alone one of "the best."

BMW Traffic Jam Assistant
Much like Audi's Traffic Jam Pilot system above, BMW's Traffic Jam Assistant isn't a fully autonomous system to be used at all times, but rather a semi-autonomous feature that takes away some of the monotony of sitting in heavy, bumper-to-bumper, stop-and-go traffic. When you're in such a setting (at very low speeds), Traffic Jam Assistant can take over all steering, braking and accelerating, meaning you no longer have to actually carry out the mind-numbing tasks of stop-and-go driving. Unfortunately, Traffic Jam Assistant generally requires you to keep your hands on the wheel, even if it's doing the steering and working the pedals.

Another apparent rehash of a manufacturer press release. Sensors? TWS? DMS? To call this a semi-autonomous system in the same league as Tesla's groundbreaking Autopilot or Cadillac's brilliant SuperCruise is the height of laziness. This is glorified ADAS (Advanced Driver Assistance System). I learned almost nothing here.

Cadillac SuperCruise
Cadillac bills its "Super Cruise" system as the "world's first true hands-free driving system" on the theory that, unlike other systems, it doesn't really require driver intervention: According to Cadillac, if you drive on the brand's mapped routes, you can let the system drive your vehicle for hours on end without a problem—and without ever tapping the steering wheel to let the system know you're there. Unfortunately, the caveat is that you have to drive on Cadillac's mapped routes for the system to work—and right now, Cadillac has mapped a mere 130,000 miles of highways in the United States and Canada, far short of the 4.8 million total miles of road in the two countries. Regardless, the system is impressive, and it's available right now in the Cadillac CT6 luxury sedan.

SuperCruise is impressive, but you wouldn't know why from this paragraph, which bizarrely omits the presence of Cadillac's unique advantage: the DMS, which uses a camera to disengages the system if the driver turns his head too far off-axis. SuperCruise is the only such system on the market to include this, and is theoretically light-years ahead of everyone else in terms of absolute safety (with a caveat). It's outrageous to simply lump SuperCruise on a list with most of the others that are primitive by comparison.

Nissan/Infiniti ProPilot
Nissan's comprehensive ProPilot driver assist system is available on the new 2018 Nissan Leaf and is coming to the 2018 Infiniti Q50 sedan, which goes on sale shortly. Unfortunately, it's probably the least autonomous of all the systems on this list: Like many adaptive cruise control systems, it can accelerate and brake for you, based on whatever speed you set and the actions of the vehicle ahead. Unlike many adaptive cruise control systems, it can also steer for you—but there's a catch: You have to keep your hands on the steering wheel, basically, at all times. Remove your hands from the wheel for more than even just a few seconds and the car sounds warning chimes to remind you to get your hands back in place. The system also keeps you centered in your lane. It's not fully autonomous, but we did sample a totally self-driving Infiniti Q70 and it navigated the real world in a point A to point B and back demo with no issues and no human intervention. Outside the U.S., the Nissan Serena (a minivan) gets a more comprehensive ProPilot system so, clearly, a self-driving Nissan is headed our way in the not too distant future.

I've also used the Nissan/Infiniti ProPilot system. It's fine. It's a competently executed ADAS suite, which doesn't really qualify as a semi-autonomous driving system. It uses a two-stage engagement interface, similar to Volvo Pilot Assist and Mercedes Drive Pilot, which is either annoying or sucks, depending on your point of view. You activate the system, which then enters passive mode, and it decides when and where to engage. The situational awareness display is almost useless, just like everyone else's save Tesla's. It requires two lane markings to engage, as opposed to Tesla, which needs only one.

Strangely, Doug says, "we did sample a totally self-driving Infiniti Q70 and it navigated the real world in a point A to point B and back demo with no issues and no human intervention." So, Infiniti gave him a ride in a Level 4 Q70? What does this have to do with the ProPilot semi-autonomous system? I have no idea.

This next paragraph is so dumb I'm bolding the worst parts.

Mercedes-Benz Drive Pilot
The latest Mercedes-Benz E-Class debuts with a new system called Drive Pilot, which allows fully autonomous driving—and even lane changes—at virtually all speeds when weather and road conditions are right.

WRONG. WRONG. WRONG. DRIVE PILOT DOES NOT ALLOW FULLY AUTONOMOUS DRIVING.

Mercedes-Benz rolled out a campaign suggesting, erroneously, the 2017 E-Class was self-driving, and then pulled it after they were eviscerated in the media.

Here's the a screen capture of the story I wrote explaining this in September of 2016:

"Unfortunately, like all largely autonomous systems except the aforementioned Cadillac Super Cruise, you can't simply remove your hands from the wheel and let the car do the work—regulations prohibit that—but you can keep your hands off the wheel for longer than with some other systems. Some tests say it's possible for up to 45 seconds."

So, after calling the car fully autonomous, Demuro then says it's only "largely autonomous," and that you can only take your hands off the wheel for 45 seconds, referring to "some tests."

Also, if "regulations prohibit" removing your hands from the wheel and letting "the car do the work," then why can Cadillac's system do so? He states both ideas, seemingly contradictory to one another, in the same sentence, without ever attempting to resolve them. Are there editors at Autotrader? What about fact-checkers?

Tesla Autopilot
Tesla's Autopilot system is the closest thing to autonomous technology, aside from Cadillac's Super Cruise. When Autopilot first debuted, drivers could leave their hands off the steering wheel for long periods of time—but government regulations have limited that capability, and drivers now must make contact with the wheel every minute or two to let Autopilot know the driver hasn't climbed into the back seat to take a nap. Still, when your hands are off the wheel, Autopilot does it all: It can slow down, speed up, change lanes and negotiate most corners and curves, even when road lines aren't tremendously reliable.

To be honest, after the Doug's outrageous claim about Mercedes' self-driving E-Class, it was hard to continue reading. At least he gets this one partially right. Autopilot is up there with SuperCruise as the best system, but he fails to point out that there are now multiple versions of Autopilot in the field, each with very different behaviors:

• the first-gen AP1 S/X models
• the very different AP2 S/X versions
• the AP2 in the Model 3—the user interface for which I consider sufficiently different to be considered a different system

Doug has driven all these cars. Did he notice the differences? Apparently not.

Also, I'm unaware of any American regulations that govern hands-off intervals, but I could be wrong. Tesla's big Autopilot update that added a three-strikes-you're-out disengagement rule was implemented voluntarily.

Volvo Pilot Assist
Volvo's Pilot Assist feature works much like Tesla's Autopilot and Mercedes-Benz's Drive Pilot: It boasts largely autonomous driving, but it still requires occasional inputs from the driver so the system can verify the driver is still in place. But notice the name. Volvo says this is not an autonomous system, but more of a driver's aide. The feature, which is available on Volvo's S90 sedan, V90 station wagon and XC60 crossover, will steer around most gradual bends and can speed up or slow down the vehicle based on the actions of cars in front.

I drove the excellent S90 5,000 miles across Europe and the USA in 2016. Pilot Assist is not "largely autonomous driving." And the system works nothing like Tesla's Autopilot. It has a two-stage engagement system similar to Mercedes Drive Pilot, but that's where their similarities end. This is competent ADAS, similar to Nissan ProPilot.

It's seems to me that Doug DeMuro knows pretty much nothing about systems. In fact, I'm not even sure he's fully read the various press releases, given that he omits information that educated readers might use to make an informed buying decision.

Strangely, DeMuro omits the Honda/Acura system which George Hotz uses in an ILX as Comma.ai's self-driving development platform. It's easily as good as the Nissan and Volvo systems.

@Autotrader: Doug DeMuro's "reporting"—especially on Drive Pilot—is unconscionable. You should correct the Mercedes "fully autonomous" section immediately, if not retract the whole story.

@Doug: You're a wonderful entertainer. Stick to that, before someone gets hurt.

Alex Roy is Editor-at-Large for The Drive, Host of The Autonocast, co-host of /DRIVE on NBC Sports, author of The Driver, has broken numerous endurance driving records in Europe & the USA in the internal combustion, EV, 3-wheeler & Semi-Autonomous Classes, including the infamous Cannonball Run record. You can follow him on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Audi has confirmed that it is considering bringing the redesigned A6 Avant station wagon along with its hypothetical S6 and RS6 variants thereof to the United States.

Audi USA's director of product communications, Mark Dahncke, told Motor Authority that the automaker has acknowledged the demand for the A6 Avant's wagon body style, and is evaluating whether or not to sell the vehicle stateside. The executive reportedly stated that Audi's decision will come soon.

When contacted by The Drive for confirmation, as well as comment on possible sale of the A4 Avant, Dahncke commented that Audi will "continue to investigate future models and certainly include Avant variants as part of that process."

Previously, Audi has explained that it does not sell the A6 Avant in the U.S. due to the likelihood of stealing sales from the similarly priced Q7. Continued interest in the high-performance RS6 Avant in particular (the model is widely seen as Europe-only forbidden fruit) may be attributable for Audi's more receptive stance toward selling the model in the U.S., though the automaker has likely also noted that the wagon segment is among the fastest-growing vehicle segments in the American market.

Wagons were found in a recent study to be the body style with the fourth-largest percentage growth in sales over the last five years, at 29 percent, behind crossovers, small SUVs, and midsize pickup trucks. Despite their growing sales figures, their market share remains minuscule at about two percent. Crossovers remain the fastest-growing body style, and it is likely for that reason that Audi stuck with them for its first electric vehicle, the E-Tron crossover. Audi has not made public any plans to produce an electric wagon, but if one is made, whether it arrives in the U.S. could be informed by Audi's decision regarding the A6 Avant.

Make Model: 2020 Range Rover Velar SVAutobiography Dynamic Edition

Top Line: The Velar finally gets the 5.0-liter supercharged V-8 from its other range-topping siblings.

What's New: The Velar SVAutobiography Dynamic Edition is the most powerful Velar model yet produced, with 170 more horses than the Velar P380. The Velar SVAutobiography Dynamic Edition utilizes the 5.0-liter supercharged V-8 that pumps out 550 horsepower and 502 pound-feet of torque. This is the same supercharged V-8 that is found in several other range-topping Land Rover and Jaguar vehicles, and the automaker claims the new Velar will sprint from zero to 60 in 4.3 seconds and continue to a top speed of 170 miles per hour—an improvement of 1.4 seconds over the regular Velar.

To match the new power output the brakes and suspension components have been upgraded with 15.5-inch front and 15.6-inch rear two-piece rotors with four-piston calipers up front. The air suspension works with constantly variable dampers to reduce body roll, improve handling characteristics, and deliver a more focused driving experience. Land Rover claims the standard forged aluminum 21-inch wheels weigh the same as the 20-inch wheels on the standard Velar, but there are optional 22-inch rims if the 21-inch rims are just too basic for some.

The exterior of the Velar SVAutobiography Dynamic Edition sees some adjustments as well. The new front bumper features larger air intakes to help the engine breathe in more air and cool the new brakes. The rear bumper has been revised to integrate quad exhaust tips. The new variant is the only Velar to receive the Satin Byron Blue exclusive paint color, with the other available colors being Firenze Red, Santorini Black, Eiger Grey, Fuji White, and Indus Silver.

Inside the luxury has been stepped up a notch with double stitched, perforated, and quilted Windsor leather exclusive to the SVAutobiography Dynamic Edition. There are four color combinations available, Ebony, Cirrus, Vintage Tan and Pimento. For the front seat driver and passenger, 20-way adjustable heated and cooled performance seats with memory and massage functions are standard. The steering wheel is a unique sports design which has been special contoured and features aluminum gear shift paddles. A carbon fiber package is optional to make the interior feel even sportier.

Land Rover has developed new calibrations for the AWD system, active rear locking differential, the eight-speed transmission, steering, and air suspension which are unique to the Velar SVAutobiography Dynamic Edition. The AWD system features a reinforced transfer box to withstand the extra power provided by the supercharged V-8 under the hood. The AWD setup can direct up to 100 of the power to the front or rear depending on conditions to improve traction. The sound of the 5.0 liter supercharged V-8 is routed through a variable exhaust system with valves to control the sound depending on how the vehicle is being driven.

Quotable: “Developing the Range Rover Velar SVAutobiography Dynamic Edition is the kind of task Special Vehicle Operations was made for,” said Michael van der Sande, Managing Director of Jaguar Land Rover Special Operations. “Enhancing performance is straightforward; the challenge here was preserving the composure, capability and refinement inherent in Range Rover Velar. We’ve done this and, in the process, created an SUV that strikes a brilliant balance between go-anywhere practicality, dynamic performance and relaxing comfort – it truly is an SUV for any occasion.”

“The Velar SVAutobiography Dynamic Edition retains the all-terrain capability and comfort customers expect from a Range Rover, with an even more rewarding and engaging driving experience,” said David Pook, SVO Vehicle Dynamics Manager for Jaguar Land Rover. “The result is a composed and luxurious SUV that looks, sounds and feels unique.”

What You Need to Know: The Velar SVAutobiography Dynamic Edition brings the power and luxury from Land Rovers top SUVs to a smaller and less expensive package. Pricing and release date has yet to be confirmed.

Honda is partnering with Contemporary Amperex Technology Ltd. (CATL), China's largest supplier of batteries for electric cars. The two companies have signed an agreement to cooperate on the development of battery tech, reports Reuters. CATL will also supply batteries for Honda electric cars, although it's unclear whether the deal will have any impact on the United States market.

CATL will open an office near Honda's research facility in Tochigi Prefecture, near Tokyo, according to the report. The Chinese firm will also reportedly supply 56 gigawatt-hours of batteries to Honda by 2027. Most of those batteries will likely go into cars destined for the Chinese market, where Honda and other automakers are working to boost electric-car sales in order to meet stricter government regulations.

"The agreement focuses on supply of EV batteries in Asia," a Honda spokesperson told Reuters, adding that Honda "could also consider some supply for the North American market."

Honda expects battery-electric, hybrid, and hydrogen fuel-cell cars to make up two-thirds of its global sales by 2030 and seems to be taking that prediction seriously. In June 2018, Honda announced a joint effort with General Motors on battery development. In December 2018, the Japanese automaker announced a potential research breakthrough that could lead to higher-capacity batteries, with a less-severe environmental impact.

But when it comes to battery-electric cars, Honda doesn't seem to be putting much emphasis on the U.S. The current Clarity Electric has an EPA-rated range of just 89 miles at a time when many competitors are surpassing 200 miles. The well-received Urban EV concept is expected to go into production, but it likely won't make it to the U.S.

CATL already counts Volkswagen and BMW among its clients. The company also invests in Chinese startup Byton and will supply batteries for Byton electric cars.

In an unannounced move by the company, Tesla has slashed the price of its best-selling Model 3 electric sedan by $1,100. This move marks the second price reduction in 2019 so far, following a fleet-wide price drop of $2,000 which occurred at the beginning of the year.

As of writing, the most basic Model 3 can be had for $42,900, a nine percent reduction over the $46,000 price tag that the vehicle held on on Dec. 31, 2018.

Originally when the mid-range Model 3 launched in October of 2018, the vehicle was priced at $45,000. Five days after its launch, Tesla increased the cost to $46,000 and held steady until Jan. 1, 2019, when it reduced the price of all its models by $2,000, offsetting the newly reduced federal tax credit. This effectively dropped the mid-range Model 3's price to $44,000, until it was reduced yet again on Tuesday.

According to Bloomberg, the automaker reports that the slash was made possible by eliminating its vehicle purchase referral program last month. It's not clear how much of Tesla's margin was caused by the program itself, however, several individuals were able to refer enough buyers to the brand to qualify for a free $250,000 Tesla Roadster. Though the cost burden was apparently present across the entire lineup, CEO Elon Musk specifically noted that the referral program was adding too much to the bottom line of the Model 3 in particular.

Tesla says that it is still working towards chipping away the price in order to reach its long-promised goal of $35,000.

We’re doing everything we can to get there. It’s a super hard grind.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 6, 2019

"We’re doing everything we can to get there." said Musk in a tweet to The Drive directly. "It’s a super hard grind."

Since the announcement of the Model 3, Tesla has touted that it aims to launch the car as an affordable EV. Ultimately, the automaker has eyed a price tag of $35,000, but did note that it would take time for the company to reach the position of being able to produce the car at a profit at that particular price point. The automaker believes that by continuing to reduce the cost of the car, it will be able to inversely increase the sales and satisfy a seemingly insatiable demand.

"[I]t's important to appreciate that the demand for Model 3 is insanely high. The inhibitor is affordability." said Musk during Tesla's fourth quarter earnings call. "It's just like people literally don't have the money to buy the car. It's got nothing to do with desire. They just don't have enough money in their bank account. If the car can be made more affordable, the demand is extraordinary."