As auto manufacturers rush to bring self-driving features to the market, they may have a responsibility to ensure motorists understand the limits of the latest technologies.
Weeks after autonomous driving technology contributed to a fatal crash for the first time, U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx told a room full of automated driving leaders Wednesday that they can?t expect car owners to understand the capabilities and complexity of autonomous systems, or to always play by the agreed-upon rules.
Although he never mentioned Tesla Motors or Joshua Brown by name, Foxx made it clear he was addressing the May 7 crash that killed Brown while he operated a Model S which had its Autopilot feature engaged.
?Sometimes the coolness of the technology may drive people to push the limits beyond what manufacturers have intended,? Foxx said while delivering the keynote address at the Automated Vehicle Symposium in San Francisco. ?We need to think about that even as we build these systems. We must consider not just what?s within the scope of their intended use, but within the uses that can be reasonably foreseen.?
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“We don?t want to replace crashes that occur based on human factors with large numbers of crashes caused by systems.” ? Anthony Foxx

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Federal investigators from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration are investigating the collision, in which a tractor trailer turned across Brown?s path on a divided Florida highway. Neither Au...