Articles by Keith Naughton

Driverless Cars Mapping Route from Labs to Driveways

Car electronics supplier Delphi Automotive Plc went coast-to-coast in 2015 in a self-driving Audi Q5 sport-utility vehicle to prove the autonomous automobile had arrived. Now, Delphi is shifting from stunts to selling. In Las Vegas this week at CES, formerly …

Ford CEO: Affordable Driverless Cars to Be in Showrooms in 10 Years

Ford Motor Co. intends to start selling driverless cars to the public by about 2025, its chief executive officer said. The goal is to lower costs enough to make autonomous vehicles affordable to millions of people, CEO Mark Fields said …

73% of U.S. Drivers Welcome Commuting with Robot Behind the Wheel: Survey

Almost three-quarters of U.S. drivers are eager to replace the daily commute’s drudgery with a self-driving car and 80 percent say they would pay extra to have a robot take the wheel, according to a survey that contradicts other recent …

U.S. Wants Safety ‘Two Times Better’ for Autonomous Cars

Self-driving cars must increase safety at least twofold to make a real dent in the 38,000 lives lost on American roads last year, the U.S. auto-safety chief said as the federal government prepares to release rules for autonomous vehicles next …

Driverless Car Supporters Urge National Laws to Override State, Local

A patchwork of state laws governing the operation of self-driving cars threatens to stall their development, supporters told lawmakers as U.S. senators began consideration of a national standard for robotic vehicles. “It’s absolutely critical that we have uniform rules across …

Michigan Says Potholes Make State a Great Place to Test Robot Cars

Michigan and California, vying for control of our driverless future, are each proposing crumbling World War II military sites as ideal locations to test robot cars. Michigan’s secret weapon? Better potholes. The Great Lakes state plans to make a test …

Driverless Cars Give Lawyers Bottomless List of Defendants

Imagine a robot car with no one behind the wheel hitting another driverless car. Who’s at fault? The answer: No one knows. But plaintiff’s lawyers are salivating at the prospects for big paydays from such accidents. If computers routinely crash, …

Driverless Car Accidents Pile Up As They Obey Laws, Humans Don’t So Much

The self-driving car, that cutting-edge creation that’s supposed to lead to a world without accidents, is achieving the exact opposite right now: The vehicles have racked up a crash rate double that of those with human drivers. The glitch? They …

Professor Steers Driverless Car Programmers Toward Ethical Questions

It’s nothing more than a dune buggy on a cordoned-off street but it’s headed for trouble. A jumble of sawhorses and traffic’ cones simulates a road crew working over a manhole and the driverless car has to make a decision …

U.S. Missing Life-Saving Opportunity of Driver Assistance Technologies

New auto safety technologies such as automatic braking and sensors that keep a car in its lane could prevent almost 10,000 U.S. road deaths a year and save $251 billion if they were more widely available, according to a Boston …