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UPDATE: U.S. Sets Guidelines for Self-Driving Cars

Today the U.S. Dept. of Transportation will unveil a new approach to developing vehicle technologies that aims to speed the advent of driverless cars while ensuring their safe performance.
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The U.S. Dept. of Transportation has announced a new policy to handle the development and safe implementation of driverless cars.

The policy focuses on guidelines rather than the government’s traditional approach of imposing myriad safety performance standards on such vehicles.

Under the plan, the National Highway Safety Administration is adopting SAE International’s five-level rating system for autonomous vehicles and applying it to vehicles with levels 3-5 autonomy. A Level 3 vehicle can drive itself automatically under some conditions but requires immediate human intervention in other situations. Level 1 cars have no driver aids, and Level 5 vehicles never require human control.

Manufacturers are to self-certify a car’s level of autonomy in terms of 15 aspects covering everything from design and development to testing and deployment.

The plan also recognizes that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration will need new regulatory powers to govern the safety of autonomous vehicles on the road. The proposal also seeks to clarify how states and the federal government should coordinate their efforts to regulate such cars.

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