Public Streets Are the Lab for Self-Driving Experiments

Tesla’s relentless vision for self-driving cars has played out on America’s public roads — with its autonomous driving technology blamed in at least 12 accidents, with one death and 17 injuries. Lawsuits and a government investigation have followed. But one question lingers: How is Tesla allowed to do that in the first place?

The answer is that there is no federal regulation to stop Tesla — or the many other autonomous vehicle companies — from using public streets as a laboratory. As long as a driver is ready to take over, the only thing that prevents a company from putting an experimental autonomous vehicle on a public road is the threat of a lawsuit or bad publicity.

In June when the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration ordered — for the first time — that car accidents involving driver assist or autonomous features be reported, many concluded that Tesla was the sole motivation. However, the order names 108 carmakers and tech companies, revealing how widespread unregulated autonomous road testing may be.

Any future regulation will be hammered out between diametrically opposed camps. On one side are safety advocates, who say autonomous driving features, like those that control speed, steering and braking, should be proved safer than drivers before they are allowed on public roads. On the other side are car and tech industry backers, who say those features cannot become safer than humans without unfettered testing in the real world.

The question facing regulators, carmakers and the public is: Does regulation makes us safer, or will it slow the adoption of technology that makes us safer?

Safety proponents may disagree over what testing should be required, but they agree there should be some standard. “You can’t anticipate everything,” said Phil Koopman, an expert on safety standards for autonomous cars. “But the car industry uses that as an excuse for doing nothing.”