Feds recognize computers can be drivers
Paving the way for cars with no steering wheels
If a car is driverless, who is the driver? In February, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) — an agency within the U.S. Department of Transportation that establishes and enforces automotive and driving regulations — offered the federal government’s solution to this would-be riddle.*
In response to a letter from Google’s Self-Driving Car Project, which in November 2015 requested interpretation of certain federal motor vehicle safety standards with respect to its autonomous vehicle (AV) design proposals, the NHTSA wrote:
As a foundational starting point […] NHTSA will interpret ‘driver’ in the context of Google’s described motor vehicle design as referring to SDS [or self-driving system], and not to any of the vehicle occupants. We agree with Google its SDV [or self-driving vehicle] will not have a ‘driver’ in the traditional sense that vehicles have had drivers during the last more than one hundred years. […] If no human occupant of the vehicle can actually drive the vehicle, it is more reasonable to identify the ‘driver’ as whatever (as opposed to whoever) is doing the driving.
This removes a major roadblock in AV development. An earlier state-level ruling by California’s Department of Motor Vehicles mandated that even a so-called driverless car must have a licensed driver who not only can take over as needed, but also is liable for traffic violations and accidents. In designing its AVs, Google has grappled with this issue — i.e., whether to allow manual override capabilities by a human — ultimately determining that its fully autonomous prototype model would be safer without a steering wheel or pedals for accelerating or braking.
By recognizing the artificial intelligence system itself as the driver, the federal government is effectively clearing a path toward permitting the absence of such operating components in AVs. While it is unlikely that federal safety guidelines will be rewritten overnight, the NHTSA has “offered its most comprehensive map yet of the legal obstacles to putting fully autonomous vehicles on the road,” as first reported by Reuters.
Google has been at the forefront of both regulatory engagement and technology development. It currently dominates in AV mileage and has the lowest rates of human intervention compared to its peer set of AV testers, which includes automakers like Mercedes-Benz, Nissan, Tesla, and Volkswagen. As of January 2016, its Self-Driving Car Project logs between 10,000 to 15,000 autonomous miles per week on public streets in Mountain View, CA, and Austin, TX, and has completed over 1.4 million miles in autonomous mode since its inception in 2009. While Quartz points out this isn’t all that much, Google can now count this legal victory as another sign of the long-term viability of AVs.
(*Google’s Deepmind probably would have solved it anyway.)
