"Q: Is this an uphill battle for self-driving car proponents?
Not necessarily. Bryant Walker Smith, a law professor at the University of South Carolina who studies the technology, says federal guidelines may help take pressure off states to create their own regulations.
“My key message is, Start from the bottom up rather than the top down,” he says. “What we’ve seen in the last few years is states that say, ‘Oh, we want to do something about that,’ and so they jump immediately to passing a law. The bottom-up approach looks at the technology first.”
In California, Google has been aggressively lobbying the Department of Motor Vehicles to finalize its long-delayed guidelines. When a draft was released in December that sharply limited the company’s ultimate goal to make cars without pedals or a steering wheel, the company balked, saying the guidelines put “a ceiling on the potential for fully self-driving cars.” So Google has focused on tests in Texas, where the embrace from lawmakers has been warmer. "
- Date Published:03/03/2016
- Original Publication:The Christian Science Monitor