Autonomous car makers dodge security and privacy questions in Congress

Executives from Google, General Motors, Delphi, and Lyft appeared before a US Senate committee yesterday, to testify on their latest efforts to make self-driving cars available to the public.

However, when asked whether they would support a bill that required anti-hacking safeguards in connected and autonomous cars, they had no convincing answers.

Senator Edward Markey (Democrat - Massachusetts) led the questioning.

Sen Markey is sponsoring a bill  that would require the Federal Trade Commission and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to develop standards for protection of privacy and preventing potentially deadly hacks.

In response to Markey's question asking the executives to state "yes" or "no" to whether they supported mandatory privacy and safety standards, the executives only sought to deflect the question.

"We haven't determined whether we need mandatory standards or not," said Glen DeVos, vice president for global engineering at Delphi.

"We think a more flexible approach is preferable," said Mike Abelson, vice president at GM.

"Google is attacked on a regular basis," said that company's head of self-driving cars, Chris Urmson. "We have hundreds of people devoted to cybersecurity."

Visibly unhappy with the responses Markey said, "I understand what you're saying. Witnesses sat here 30 years ago and said the same thing about airbags  and seat belts. How they should leave it to the individual companies, that it was hard to mandate a specific airbag and it would be very expensive. So I understand the consistency over the decades. At the same time, people expect airbags to protect their children. And they're going to expect certain standards across the board that are going to protect people."

Meanwhile, the rapid rise of self-driving technologies over the past two years had caught Michigan lawmakers, who had banned these technologies in 2013, on the wrong foot. However, yesterday they sought to make amends as a report from state transportation officials, was taken up at a hearing in Lansing. The report concluded that ''this technology will soon be available for public use.''

''We would recommend legislation that would permit the operation of automated vehicles and vehicles equipped with automated technology by the public, with conditions if necessary, on public roads and right of way,'' the transportation officials wrote.

Meanwhile in state capitals and on Capitol Hill, officials are gearing up for one of the biggest changes on US roadways in recent times, as the Obama administration had promised to release a set of national guidelines on automated cars by July.