Oct. 12, 2017—The California Department of Motor Vehicles will allow autonomous cars without steering wheels, foot pedals, mirrors and human drivers behind the wheel to be tested on its roads starting next year, according to The Verge.
The department released its revised regulations today governing the safe deployment of autonomous vehicles on public roads.
After a 15-day public comment period, those rules will be submitted to the state government, which will then begin enforcing them sometime in the middle of 2018.
The rules are a stark departure from the original proposal issued in 2015. Those draft regulations would have put the kibosh on autonomous vehicles without a human driver, such as Google’s steering wheel-less prototype.
But then in May, the agency reversed itself, putting out a new proposal that would not only allow for the testing of self-driving cars without a human driver, but also regulate the manufacture and sale of fully autonomous vehicles.
