Who's the driver of that Google car? Feds ready to say it's the computer

A car's driver doesn't necessarily have to be human: The artificial intelligence behind Google Inc.'s self-driving system could count, according to federal highway safety officials. In a letter posted on the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's website, the agency responded to Google's request for interpretation of several federal safety standards as they apply to the tech giant's self-driving cars. As a premise of the interpretation, "NHTSA will interpret'driver' in the context of Google's described motor vehicle design as referring to the [self-driving system], and not to any of the vehicle occupants," Chief Counsel Paul Hemmersbaugh said in the letter. "We agree with Google its [self-driving vehicle] will not have a driver in the traditional sense that vehicles have had drivers during the last more than 100 years." Google's not-so-secret special projects lab, Google X, is housed in an old shopping mall near Mountain View, Calif.