The development of autonomous vehicle demands tons of data. Since I have been working on the data collecting project, I came to understand the strict regulations of China regarding data.

The restriction of HD Map is the most mentionable.
A HD Map contains the information of lanes, traffic lights, and bridges. The precision can be achieved to centimeters in high quality maps.
All these information are considered as National Security related. Except for the 14 organizations with special permission, The producing and sharing of HD maps are strongly prohibited.

HD-map A HD Map of Here
To clarify which data are legally to collect, we came to the legal department and authority for clarification.
This is the answer we got: “All sensory data that captures the information of roads and locations are prohibited by HD Maps restriction, which including everything: LiDAR, radar, cameras, and GPS. Even if the purpose was not for HD map, the collecting is violating the laws already.”

What a ridiculous answer. This answer is saying that simply hosting a camera vehicle recorder is violating the law already.

data The visualization of Waymo’s data

The is a gray zone, where legislation is far behind of technology. Data collecting is tricky to be defined under the current regulations.
In lawer’s perspective, the statement should be interpreted in the most restricted way. In this way, risks are eliminated and company is safe.
But from the perspective of product, strictly following the rule is definitely a bad choice. Especially when we see our competitors are collecting data without troubles.

In a gray zone like this, we need some courages and wits to act.
Small companies just collect data freely. No body would notice anyway.
Huge enterprises choose to partner with organization with permit. Different partnerships have different solutions.
There is conservative solution requiring an inspector with license sitting in the data collecting vehicle.
There is also a smart solution applying fancy business transitions, thus the collecting can be done under partner’s entity.
try
Such gary zones would be more common, since technology goes faster and wilder.
Mobile payment and car-hailing platforms are typical examples.
Following restrictions is not enough. We need to understand the risks and build a strategy to it.

To build a strategy, I came up some random aspects that should be considered.

  1. How do my competitors handle it？
  2. Is the government able to catch me?
  3. How is my relationship to the authority?
  4. Hou mucu is the fibe when get caught?
  5. Would my act damages someone’s benefit and creating enemies？ (Uber/DiDi)
  6. Would my act benefit everyone and justifies my acts？(Alipay/WeChat Pay)

Nevertheless, to win the the challenge of restrictions, it takes wisdom and chances.
Good luck. And I don’t want to see each other in the jail. ;)