Autonomous cars will get new federal guidelines: 'We want people who start a trip to finish it'

Companies working on self-driving cars need to focus on safety -- "we want people who start a trip to finish it," Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx announced Tuesday, saying his department will issue new guidelines on the vehicles this summer. "Autonomous doesn't mean perfect," he told attendees at an industry conference in San Francisco. "We need industry to take the safety aspects of this very seriously." Foxx's remarks come in the wake of May's fatal crash involving a Tesla Model S sedan being used in semi-autonomous "autopilot" mode. The car crashed into a truck that the autopilot feature did not sense, killing the car's driver. The Transportation Department has been working with Google, BMW, General Motors and other companies developing driverless and partly autonomous cars to adapt existing safety rules to the new technologies.