U.S. to release guidelines on driverless vehicles

Any doubt that driverless cars, trucks and buses are on a fast track to join their human counterparts on the nation's highways may be knocked aside Tuesday, when the Department of Transportation releases long-awaited guidelines for the development of autonomous cars. The guidelines, which specify safety criteria and promise to eliminate red tape, will help "bring lifesaving technologies to the roads safely while providing innovators the space they need to develop new solutions," said the U.S. Department of Transportation in an early summary released Monday. Automakers and tech companies have been barreling ahead in their race to churn out driverless vehicles, prompting the government to play catch-up when it comes to how to regulate the technology. Under the guidelines, car manufacturers and researchers will be required to submit to a "15-point safety assessment" for driverless cars, including how the vehicles respond to system failure, whether they make data available for crash reconstruction and even whether their artificial intelligence software takes driving ethics into account. The Transportation Department will hasten approval or rejection of special exemptions to regulations for driverless cars, with an upper limit of six months.