China has just announced the death of SAE Level 3 automation. It's about time.

Level 3 features permit driving automation to hand back to a human driver while the vehicle is moving. This might work well enough for low-risk, low-speed situations in which AEB braking will clean up most messes, such as in traffic jams. But for more general use, assuring safety requires the vehicle to keep driving safely long enough for the human driver to re-engage, which in the real world is usually longer than it would take to bring the vehicle to a safe stop automatically, completing a so-called minimum risk maneuver (MRM). That is the new China regulatory requirement.

But, by definition, a driving feature that also completes the MRM is a Level 4 feature.

Think of this as "baby" Level 4. Operational constraints mean that human driver takeover is a routine occurrence, but the computer driver is responsible for safety no matter how long that takes. This is the only sane way to build a general-purpose "Level 3" system. I've been talking about this since 2021. safeautonomy.blogspot.c…

China just made this policy. If the US, Europe, and others want to prioritize safety, it is time for them to do the same.

h/t FoT; Reilly Brennan