AUTONOMOUS VEHICLES: National regulations for driverless vehicles a long way off

United States Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said there are no plans for a national set of regulations for autonomous vehicles, and that those decisions are better suited at the federal lawmaking level.

“There’s a lot the federal government can do in terms of laying out safety standards and producing guidance for model legislations at the state level,” Foxx said in a statement to the media.

However, major automakers say that it would be impossible to test and eventually regulate driverless car technology because each state has different rules. For example, Audi executives said New York is the only that that requires a driver’s hand to be on the wheel at all times, so it could not test there.

 “It may happen at some point that there’s a desire for a national approach for these things, but I think we’re a little ways away from that point. Right now, we’ve got to develop a mechanism to evaluate the technology that comes to us and as rapidly as we can,” Foxx continued.