Nevada Paving Way for Self-Driving Cars

On Wednesday Nevada state legislature approved regulations for self-driving vehicles. This makes Nevada the first state in the U.S. to do so. These regulations set the requirements for companies who wish to test their self-driving vehicles on Nevada’s public roadways. These vehicles will be required to have a red license plate and once the technology is available to the public, autonomous cars will be required to have a green license plate.

My first thoughts… Awesome! Get all of these terrible drivers off the road! But of course it’s never as simple as that. While the technology is nearly there to make this a reality there are so many hurdles to overcome before consumer will be able to get their hands on autonomous cars.

Are these autonomous cars able to co-exist with other drivers? What about traffic and sudden stops? And that’s not to mention people’s willingness (or unwillingness) to adopt the technology. Personally, I find driving to be very therapeutic and don’t necessarily want to give that up, but if one thing can ruin a nice, relaxing drive it’s bad drivers. And another question, once this technology hits the mainstream how long before it becomes mandatory? I’m all for safer driving conditions, but I certainly don’t want to give up my right to drive my own car.

Now I’m just playing devil’s advocate because I love the idea of self-driving cars, but how would insurance companies handle these? Would rates be distinguished between manual and automatic drivers? How would fault be handled in accidents? I could go on and on with similar questions, but I’ll leave it at that for now.

One huge plus I see with this technology is with senior citizens and possibly even student drivers. Both could be driven automatically for safety reasons, or another possibility is to have the car monitor the person’s driving behavior and make small adjustments automatically if necessary.

Despite all of the questions I have regarding this technology, I would love to see autonomous cars on the road in the near future. And on that note, it’s the year 2012… Where’s my jetpack???