LEADING:

The DoT's new Federal Automated Vehicles Policy includes a 15-point safety assessment to help autonomous vehicle makers evaluate their technology in areas including data recording and sharing, vehicle cybersecurity, and how the vehicles interact with human drivers and passengers. The guidelines state that reporting these safety assessments to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is voluntary, but could become mandatory as the DoT develops formal autonomous vehicle regulations.

The safety assessment is significant because it gives tech companies and automakers some much-needed guidance as they hurtle into a murky future. "The public is asking themselves if, once these regulations are followed, are autonomous vehicles going to be safe?" says Nidhi Kalra, a senior information scientist at research institute RAND Corp. and co-director of its Center for Decision Making under Uncertainty. Right now the answer is "maybe," Kalra says. Whether autonomous vehicle makers will ever be able to answer "yes" to that question is complicated--there is no test to determine whether an autonomous vehicle is safe nor is there even a consensus as to how safety is defined. "Some people will not accept mistakes from machines, even if those mistakes occur at a lower rate than they do with humans," Kalra says. "Others will say that if the vehicles are safer than the average human driver, then we should allow them on the roads."

The DoT's guidelines clarify the roles that federal and state governments will have in regulating self-driving cars. The federal government will continue to be responsible for the safety of the vehicles themselves--including the software that allows them to operate autonomously--while the states remain in charge of regulating human drivers when they are at the wheel, according to Secretary of Transportation Anthony Foxx. At a press conference announcing the policy, Foxx also noted that the DoT will put in place an exemption process that companies can take advantage of if they want to depart radically from current vehicle designs--such as eliminating steering wheels and brake pedals--if they can prove that the new design improves vehicle safety.

In March the DoT acknowledged that current federal motor vehicle safety standards did not directly address automated vehicle technologies. The newly proposed regulations are an effort to remedy this problem, as carmakers and tech companies hurry to develop and sell new self-driving technologies. The main focus is on highly automated vehicles that can take full control of the driving task in at least some circumstances. Portions of the guidelines also apply to lower levels of automation, including some of the driver-assistance systems already being deployed by automakers today.

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