Congress Urged to Pass National Laws for Autonomous Cars

The technology for self-driving cars is moving fast. But carmakers, Silicon Valley developers and ride-share providers agree that putting such vehicles on the road in large numbers won’t happen without nationwide rules to govern their use.

That was the takeaway from Tuesday’s hearing by the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation on the future of autonomous vehicles.

Transportation experts told the panel that interstate travel in fully automatic cars will be virtually impossible if states continue to impose conflicting rules about how the vehicles may be operated.

Researchers add that far more testing will be needed to prove fully automatic vehicles are truly safe for all the situations human drivers encounter. “It’s simply not good enough to let these cars operate [only] in California or southern Texas to accrue miles,” Mary Cummings, director of Duke University’s Humans and Autonomy Laboratory tells the senators.

Cummings points to research by the Rand Corp. predicting 275 million miles of on-road testing will be required to verify the safety of fully automatic cars. Some industry experts have estimated 1 billion miles may be necessary.