California has become the first state to allow self-driving vehicles to operate on public roads without having an operator inside.

The new law, approved by California Governor Jerry Brown, was created to allow a project at the Bishop Ranch office park in the city of San Ramon to deploy driverless shuttles. While primarily operating on private land, the shuttle has to cross a public road on its loop through the campus, hence necessitating the need for the new law.

According to Reuters, the shuttles are supplied from French company Easymile, who already operates them in Europe and Asia, and are fully autonomous with no steering wheel, brakes, accelerator or operator.

While being created to allow one specific trial, the law sets the standards for future operator free autonomous vehicles. The standards include the need for autonomous cars to pass a 15-point safety inspection by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to function without drivers, testing to ascertain the vehicle’s ability to avoid objects and pedestrians, cybersecurity, ethics and backup plans if a system fails.

Under the new law, vehicles in the Easymile trial will also be limited to traveling no faster than 25 miles per hour, and the vehicle must include a two-way communication link between the car’s passengers and a remote operator.

New rules

The legislation will serve as the basis for a proposed set of new rules regarding autonomous vehicles, but they do not stop there, with a revision of laws regarding semi-autonomous vehicles.

Under the proposed new rules, car companies will no longer be able to describe their vehicles as “autonomous” or “self-driving” if a human is responsible for controlling the vehicle, such as with Tesla’s Autopilot technology. What the rule would mean is that most vehicles we describe today as being self-driving could no longer legally be described as such.

Semantics perhaps, but the counter argument is that as trust builds in properly autonomous vehicles that don’t require anyone behind a steering wheel, or even a steering wheel and pedals for that matter, a clear line has been set as to what an self-driving car actually is.

Image credit: Easymile