Google has provided Congress with a plan that would help bring autonomous cars that don’t allow human intervention on public roads, the Associated Press reported.
Chris Urmson, the head of Google’s self-driving vehicle initiative, sent U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx a letter Friday which contained the plan for making such vehicles legal.
Under Google’s plan, any company would be allowed to sell a driverless vehicle that doesn’t allow human intervention provided that vehicle passes federal safety guidelines. Google suggested the government could place restrictions on how an autonomous vehicle could be used based on the level of safety concerns surrounding it. What the government couldn’t do, however, is sit on an application—Google thinks each application for public road use should be reviewed within a reasonably prompt amount of time.
A summary of the plan, which was obtained by the Associated Press, suggests that a decision to grant companies these rights would result in “enormous potential safety benefits … quite promptly with appropriate safety conditions and full public input.”
Google spokesperson Johnny Luu said the company’s suggestion is “the beginning of a process” to create “the right framework that will allow deployment in a safe and timely manner.”
The U.S. Department of Transportation has encouraged companies to provide suggestions on how good autonomous vehicle technology can make it to public roadways more quickly. Google’s plan would appear to be a response to that request.