U.S. Officials Finally Accept Self-Driving Cars

LOS ANGELES – Federal transportation officials are rethinking their position on self-driving cars with an eye toward getting the emerging technology into the public’s hands.

“I want the posture of our agency to be obviously vigilant on the safety front, but I don’t want our agency to be skittish about innovations that are out there”, said Foxx, who didn’t reveal much to reporters. The driverless auto has been authorized only for tests and its use for public transportation has been completely banned.

The U.S. Department of Transportation had a cautious approach to policies concerning self-driving vehicles and only approved the test-driving of these cars.

On Tuesday, Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said that given the technology’s rapid development in the past two years, however, the federal policy is now being updated.

Judging on their recent announcement, it seems US officials finally accept self-driving cars now that Google’s new technology has proven it can function properly.

The current policy states autonomous vehicles should be limited to testing. If you’ve seen them roving on the highways of California, know that Google and some automakers, such as Nissan, Tesla Motors, and Honda, are the ones responsible for their safety.

Although Foxx was intrigued about the new technology, he has not clarified what the new policy was about. However, in all these cases, a licensed driver is always behind the wheels to take over the vehicle if the situation demands so.

According to Tech Crunch, up until today, the regulation with regard to self-driving cars are only at the state level. Legislatures in Florida, California, Michigan, the District of Columbia and Nevada have passed their own bills, which regulates autonomous driving in individual states.

Google also previously acknowledged that its cars have met with accidents while testing, but said that they were minor and happened mostly due to human error as other cars hit the driverless prototype.

Google has been pushing hard to get self-driving cars to the public as soon as possible.

In the same way as the technology of self-driving cars has been developed, the perspective of the authorities towards it has also changed.