Ever since self-driving vehicles leapt from the pages of science fiction and into the realm of reality, transportation experts and industry officials have warned that government regulation might prevent autonomous technology from reaching the road. Even when their intentions have been to encourage the adoption of autonomous vehicles, those concerns have only grown more pronounced. Thirty-nine states and the District of Columbia have proposed or enacted their own laws governing autonomous testing and deployment, resulting in a tangle of state-by-state laws and executive orders that could hinder deployment of the new technologies.
A federal regulatory structure?one set of rules to apply nationwide?could help unravel this burgeoning patchwork of laws, but so far, there’s been none forthcoming. A new report from the Eno Center for Transportation, a nonpartisan think tank, argues that it?s time for Congress to enact legislation that expands the federal government?s role in preparing public roads for self-driving cars. ?Every state legislator, after riding in a Waymo car or Uber car, they have big ideas when they come back to the state legislature in January, and we have a flurry of proposed bills,? said Greg Rogers, co-author of the report. ?But one of the problems from all this excitement is we need to have a more solid foundation of how autonomous vehicles will impact public policy, and one of the recurring issues is that definitions keep changing.?

Sen. Bill Nelson (D...