California Asked to Further Ease Rules for Self-Driving Cars

Carmakers are urging California to further ease proposed rules for testing autonomous vehicles and let the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration handle most of the oversight.

But safety and consumer groups are pushing for strong regulation at the state level, Bloomberg News reports.

Carmakers complain that California proposes to control permission to test automated cars on its public roads even if the vehicles meet federal performance standards. But critics pointed out during a hearing in Sacramento on Tuesday that there are no such federal regulations.

Bloomberg notes that California already has revised several elements of its proposed rules. Thus the state plans to allow testing on public roads of automated cars without human backup drivers on board. The proposal also has dropped provisions that would require approval by local communities to conduct such trials, and only after researchers compile a year of test-track data.

California also may drop a requirement that test vehicles must be equipped with a steering wheel, brake pedal and accelerator. Carmakers argue that the autonomous vehicles they are developing eventually won’t need those controls.