U.S. guidelines on driverless cars offer some direction on future policy

The U.S. Department of Transportation released long-awaited guidelines Tuesday for the testing and deployment of self-driving vehicles, giving manufacturers and researchers some clarity for the future, but providing only a vague sense of the federal government's exact responsibilities. At a Tuesday morning news conference, U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx described the 116-page policy document as "the most comprehensive national automated vehicle policy that the world has ever seen." However, he added that the policy is a "living document" and leaves room for "more growth and changes in the future." "One of reasons we take great pains not to be so prescriptive" is because the technology is "dynamic" and changing fast, he said, so the government needs to be "flexible." In the document, the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration emphasized that it did not intend to write the "final word on highly automated vehicles" with these guidelines.