As car accidents go, it wasn't much: Twelve minutes before noon on a cool June day, a Chevrolet Bolt was rear ended as it crawled from a stop light in downtown San Francisco. What made this fender bender noteworthy was the Bolt's driver: a computer. In California, where companies such as Cruise Automation Inc. and Waymo are ramping up testing of self-driving cars, human drivers keep running into them in low-speed fender benders. The run-ins highlight an emerging culture clash between humans who often treat traffic laws as guidelines and autonomous cars that refuse to roll th...
Starting with the idea that customers already know from the internet what they desire and what they can get for a specific price, Hyundai is pushing its dealers to modernize the new-car shopping experience. The Korean automaker on Tuesday announced that dealers will post “fair market pricing” on their websites that includes company discounts offered to consumers. Dealers, which are independent businesses, will be encouraged to add incentives they’re offering to buyers. They’ll also deliver vehicles to customers for test drives and allow people to do paperwork...
Ford Motor Co. has designed a light signal system for autonomous cars that company officials say helps solve the problem of self-driving cars safely interacting with pedestrians, bicyclists and human drivers. Ford engineers said they hope tests results from real-world encounters will pave the way for standardization and industry-wide adoption. The white light display, located at the top of the windshield, is designed to communicate intent to yield way or accelerate from a stop, which today is done through hand gestures, head nods and eye contact. The display’s color and locati...
U.S. made a proposal to South Korea to revise the five-year-old trade deal, but the country rejected it. The U.S. asked for resolution of its trade imbalance, full implementation of the existing FTA, and modification and amendment of the current deal. The officials spoke amid joint meetings in the South Korean capital after Lighthizer last month gave notice that the U.S. wants to amend the deal. No date was set for a future meeting on the issue, discussions will continue in coming weeks. The agreement could be terminated if either nation said it wanted to do so. That process would t...
Lane departure warning and blind spot detection systems can significantly prevent crashes if consumers use the features, according to two new studies by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. Single-vehicle, sideswipe and head-on crashes are reduced 11 percent if the vehicle is outfitted with lane departure warning systems, IIHS found. The rate of injury-inducing crashes decreases 21 percent with the technology. The lane departure warning study included crashed General Motors, Honda, Mazda, Mercedes-Benz, Subaru and Volvo vehicles produced between 2009 and 2015. The study looke...
