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NHTSA Announces New Guidelines for Autonomous Driving Coming This July

A lot of major and minor automakers are pushing towards the widespread use of autonomous driving, but up until now, the one key player that was holding everything back were the authorities.
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Relieving the driver of the responsibility that gave him this title in the first place is going to bring a lot of changes, and nobody was brave enough yet to try and put everything on paper. Well, some people might have been doing it behind closed doors, but the public didn't know anything about it.

Various manufacturers are already testing their self-driving cars on the roads in the US, but that's only due to the country's federal organization which grants its states the ability to make their own rules. However, keeping track of what is and isn't allowed in each of the 50 states can be tricky, which is why the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is apparently working on a new set of guidelines that will govern the use of autonomous features.

During a panel discussion at the TU-Automotive auto-tech conference, NHTSA Administrator Dr. Mark Rosekind said, quoted by readwrite: "What is unusual is everybody expects regulation comes out and that’s what it is forever, and NHTSA’s job is react and enforce it. That will not work with this area [autonomous driving]. I think we’re going to have something different in July.

According to Dr. Rosekind, the NHTSA will concentrate on four main aspects: deployment, state policies, less vague process terminology and new tools. In other words, the government agency wants to make everything concerning driver automation a lot more coherent and more cohesive, ending the current disparities between certain states.

One thing is clear: whatever it plans, the NHTSA needs to move quickly, because a lot of important players on the market have announced self-driving-ready vehicles by 2020, and having the hardware and software, but lacking the legal frame to use them doesn't mean people will refrain themselves from doing it.
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About the author: Vlad Mitrache
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"Boy meets car, boy loves car, boy gets journalism degree and starts job writing and editing at a car magazine" - 5/5. (Vlad Mitrache if he was a movie)
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