Apple has told US regulators that it is still interested in developing self-driving car technology.
Steven Kenner, the computer giant’s director of product integrity, has written to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, to confirm that it remains interested in autonomous vehicles.
The letter re-affirming its belief in the viability of the in the technology emerged less than three months after it emerged that it had axed dozens of staff from its secret vehicle division.
The company had invested substantial amounts into a project, code-named Titan. But the layoffs suggested that the company was no longer interested in producing a self-driving car itself.
However the letter to the administration indicates that it believes self-driving technology could do much to cut the death toll on the roads.
“Automated vehicles have the potential to greatly enhance the human experience—to prevent millions of car crashes and thousands of fatalities each year,” Mr Kenner wrote to Mark Rosekind, the administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
Google has already been testing self-driving cars on public roads in California and by January its vehicles had clocked up more than 1.3 million miles.
But in September one of its cars was involved in a collision with a truck whose human driver had jumped a red light. The collision led to the autonomous Lexus being taken off the road.
electric Tesla saloon car was killed following a collision while the vehicle was in autopilot mode.
Critics of the technology fear that self-driving technology, designed to remove the risk of human error, could lead to a dangerous deskilling of motorists.
But in his letter Mr Kenner said the technology should be developed as long as those involved observe “rigorous safety principles in design and production”.
[Source:-TELEGRAPH]
