In what could be seen as a major milestone and a major boost for tech giant Google, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has just given the search giant the go-ahead it needs to move forward. The safety regulators have said that the company's artificial intelligence system, which is being experimented with in a self-driving car, could be considered a driver under federal law.
In a letter sent to the company, the traffic organization agreed to its proposal, so that the automatic system (SDS) AI would be considered a legal “driver” of the car, opening the doors for more legal capabilities of its autonomous vehicle.
Google's autonomous vehicle unit submitted on November 12 a proposed plan for a car that has «no need for a human driver», says the letter to Google from the CEO of NHTSA Paul Hemmers.
“NHTSA will interpret the self-driving system as a ‘driver’ in the context of the company’s motor vehicle design, and not as a vehicle occupant,” the regulator. “We agree with Google that [its self-driving vehicle] will not have a ‘driver’ in the traditional sense that vehicles have had over the past hundred years.”
The company's autonomous cars do not depend on human agents and lack conventional input methods, such as the steering wheel, natural gas and the pedals, the brakes, the handbrake, the turn signal and the mirrors. Basically, there is nothing that a human driver would need to drive a car. Large automobile manufacturers and technology companies such as Google compete to develop and sell vehicles that can drive themselves, at least sometimes.
