According to a recent article from the Los Angeles Times, self-driving cars are the wave of the future. But of the fifty states in the U.S., only Florida, Nevada and California currently have laws that permit self-driving cars on public streets. Other states have requested that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration develop safety guidelines for self-driving cars. In response, the federal government issued new guidelines for companies and states interested in these automated motor vehicles.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration guidelines state that self-driving cars have many potential benefits, such as car crash avoidance technologies. Self-driving cars may reduce driver error, possibly saving thousands of lives lost each year to car accident fatalities. Self-driving vehicles may also reduce billions of dollars lost to accident-related hospital bills, missed wages, and so on.
The guidelines defined self-driving car technology on a scale of automation, from zero (no automation) to four (complete automation), and also proposed limited state regulation in order to encourage the research and development of these vehicles. The agency recommended specific driver’s licenses for automated vehicles, along with switches that would restore manual control to the driver.
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