Self-driving cars may one day rule the roadways, but that day is decades away. In the meantime, a new report is addressing the need to better prepare for the intervening years in which automated vehicles share the road with regular human drivers.
State laws need to be adjusted, studies need to be performed on how the presence of automated vehicles changes the behavior of human motorists, police officers need to know how to treat autonomous cars and their occupants, and motorists need training on self-driving features, said the report, Autonomous Vehicles Meet Human Drivers, issued Thursday by the Governors Highway Safety Association.
All of those topics need to be tackled as automation arises within the next five years, but they could remain in play throughout a transition period that could continue for at least three decades and maybe forever, according to the report?s author, James Hedlund, a former official at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). ?That?s a real worry,? he said. ?How do these two things react with each other" If you ask car enthusiasts, they always want to drive themselves. So this will be around for a long time, and there?s education and learning needed for both autonomous-vehicle programmers and real drivers.?

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?I don?t know how you regulate this well. It?s a very complicated game and moving forward very rapidly.?

? James Hedlund, former NHTSA official

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Some of the open questions he poses are well-established quand...