More Regulation Not the Answer as Industry Builds the Connected Car, Say Industry Officials at CES
LAS VEGAS -- Safety should be one of the industry’s biggest concerns as the connected car becomes a reality, David Strickland, administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, told CES late Tuesday. Strickland, who’s leaving the agency, said he has come to CES repeatedly because he views it as one of the most important annual car shows in the U.S.
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Timely, relevant coverage of court proceedings and agency rulings involving tariffs, classification, valuation, origin and antidumping and countervailing duties. Each day, Trade Law Daily subscribers receive a daily headline email, in-depth PDF edition and access to all relevant documents via our trade law source document library and website.
"There needs to be collaboration and cooperation among those that are doing the regulating,” said Hilary Cain, a national manager of technology and innovation policy at Toyota Motor North America. “We are talking about privacy, so we're talking about the Federal Trade Commission. We are talking about spectrum policies so we're talking about the Federal Communications Commission."
Cain complained that a dispute over spectrum set aside for vehicle-to-vehicle anti-collision systems in the 5 GHz band has slowed a key safety initiative. Last year at CES, then-FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski proposed that this spectrum, the 5850-5925 MHz band, could also be used by Wi-Fi. “I would argue that a lot of the regulatory uncertainty that exists right now is actually stifling innovation,” she said. “As an automaker, we're probably not going to deploy this technology in our vehicles if we don’t have certainty about what’s going to be the end result of these spectrum discussions.”
Mitch Bainwol, president of the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, said the regulatory process takes too long, at least two to three years, to act on anything. “Every show at CES you see dramatic new innovations,” said Bainwol, a former RIAA chairman. Government needs to take on the role of “facilitator of conversations” rather than regulator, he said.
NHSTA “does the best that it can do,” but its recently released guidelines on distracted driving show the limits of government intervention, Bainwol said. Addressed was “2 percent of the distraction problem” ignoring cellphones, smart watches and other devices, he said. “That’s a perfect metaphor for the challenge here,” he said. The NHTSA release “just is not relevant to the problem that is today.”
"Not just NHTSA, but all government agencies that work in this space need to reach out to industry, need to reach out to the consumer electronics sector,” said Andrew Brown, chief technologist at auto parts maker Delphi. “There are a lot of players in this space. All of us have a piece of the equation. … It’s not like the old days when we were in our separate corners and then we came out fighting.”
"At the core of the connected vehicle is safety,” agreed Kevin Link, senior vice president of Verizon Telematics. But Link said the answer is not for the government to get involved and set policy. “Policy often will stymie innovation,” he said. “We need to come together as an industry and we need all the players at the table.”