"Bryant Walker Smith, an associate professor at the University of South Carolina School of Law who has studied self-driving vehicle implications, said Texas not adopting any self-driving regulations may give operators like Google freedom to test.
Austin itself can provide a good space for testing as a mixture of urban and suburban environments, he said.
In some cases, Smith said, there might be laws only against reckless driving, so companies such as Google could test self-driving cars without having anyone in the driver's seat."