Researchers have unveiled a new way to test self driving cars and says it could allow them to perform he equivalent of 100 million miles of driving in just 1,000. The researchers at the University of Michigan say their find would allow manufacturers to bypass the billions of miles they would need to log for consumers to consider them road-ready. The process, which was developed using data from more than 25 million miles of real-world driving, can cut the time required to evaluate robotic vehicles' handling of potentially dangerous situations by 300 to 100,000 times, saving 99.9 percent of testing time and costs, the researchers say. Researchers at the University of Michigan say their find would allow manufacturers to bypass the billions of miles they would need to log for consumers to consider them road-ready. The new accelerated evaluation process breaks down difficult real-world driving situations into components that can be tested or simulated repeatedly, exposing automated vehicles to a condensed set of the most challenging driving situations. In this way, just 1,000 miles of testing can yield the equivalent of 300,000 to 100 million miles of real-world driving.While 100 million miles may sound like overkill, it's not nearly enough for researchers to get enough data to certify the safety of a driverless vehicle.

You can hardly blame Michigan for trying to scarf down its piece of pie before someone swipes it off their plate. The Wolverine State just became one of the first in the country to formally give the thumbs-up to autonomous cars on public roads, with no driver in the front seat. Friday, Governor Rick Snyder put his signature on bills permitting automakers to operate networks of self-driving taxis in the state.1 The legislation reverses a 2013 law that required autonomous vehicles to have a backup driver aboard, and comes as the home teams move toward delivering the tech for real. Ford has pledged to deliver fleets of fully autonomous cars, without a steering wheel or pedals, by 2021.

A: Michigan Transportation Director Kirk Steudle says the laws put Michigan ahead of most other states with the possible exception of Florida in specifically allowing tests without a human driver. Companies, he said, will make the decision as to when the cars are ready for that, based on more than a century of experience of testing cars on public roads. Automakers have a long history of testing cars on public roads in Michigan with few, if any, incidents, Steudle says. The cars also have to comply with federal safety standards and may have to be certified as roadworthy by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration if proposed federal guidelines are adopted. "I don't want to regulate the vehicles. There is nobody in state government that has any knowledge to be able to say that vehicle is ready to go on the road," Steudle said.