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Self-Driving Cars May Alter Rules of the Road

By Francie Diep

Credit: Nevada Department of Motor Vehicles

One of three self-driving Google cars Nevada has licensed the company to test anywhere in the state.

Gallery
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    A visualization of what self-driving Google cars’ sensors detect as they’re driving.

    (Nevada Department of Motor Vehicles)

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May 10, 2012 Updated May 10, 2012 at 3:19 PM PDT

(InnovationNewsDaily) The Nevada Department of Motor Vehicles announced Monday that it issued the world's first license to a self-driving vehicle – to Google, for the company to test its autonomous cars. The news garnered plenty of attention, so many people already know some of the rules Google will have to abide by, such as having two people in the car at all times. InnovationNewsDaily asked Nevada DMV spokesman Tom Jacobs for more detail on how robot cars will change the rules of the road.

For now, Nevada's new regulations for auto-cars are just tweaked versions of the usual driving laws. The new legislation is for companies that want to test self-driving cars, not citizenry who want to hop into their own robot cars. In the future, when the testing phase is over, driving laws will need more radical rethinking. Nevada officials are starting to think about those laws, but haven’t made any decisions yet, Jacobs said.

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