Back in 2013, which now seems like the dark ages for autonomous vehicles, the federal official charged with laying the groundwork for their arrival figured the first policy paper that addressed the subject would stand for a while.
?We figured we were looking at a 10- or 15-year arc,? said David Strickland, then the administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), speaking of the 2013 document. Soon, though, transportation officials realized innovation was advancing at a much faster clip and their time frame would be dramatically compressed. For the past nine months, they?ve been working to update the government?s guidance for not only the development, but also the deployment of self-driving cars on U.S. roads.
Those guidelines arrived Monday evening, and they pick up where Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx left off in January, encouraging the development of self-driving technologies. President Obama touted the lifesaving potential of autonomous vehicles in an op-ed column that appeared on the website of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the newspaper of record in the city where Uber launched a pilot project involving autonomous ride-hailing vehicles last week.
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“Much work remains ahead, but NHTSA?s guidelines

are a step in the right direction.” ? Joe Okpaku

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?Right now, for too many senior citizens and Americans with disabilities, driving isn?t an option,? Obama wrote. ?Automated vehicles could change their lives. Safer, more a...