US government issues guidelines for self-driving cars

On 19 September, the US Department of Transportation (DoT) has published a Federal Automated Vehicles Policy, which includes, among others, a set of guidelines for the ‘safe design, development and testing of automated vehicles prior to commercial sale or operation on public roads’. The guidelines include a 15-point safety self-assessment for manufacturers developing and deploying automated vehicle technologies, and describe internal processes and strategies, organisational awareness, record-keeping, testing and validation, and improved transparency to support the safe deployment of the technologies. As explained by Techcrunch, the assessment includes a request for manufacturers to document how, where, and when the vehicle should operate, what happens when it fails, how its object detection system works, what its testing process includes and data captured by its onboard crash sensors, cybersecurity measures included in the system, and more.