Google lobbies Nevada to allow autonomous cars

New York Times : In Nevada, two bills are being introduced in the legislature that would make it the first state where self-driving cars could be legally operated on public roads. Last year Google said it had test-driven robotic hybrid vehicles more than 140 000 miles on California roads, including Highway 1 between Los Angeles and San Francisco, with more than 1000 miles driven entirely autonomously. The bills are expected to come to a vote before the legislature’s session ends in June. One is an amendment to an electric-vehicle bill that would provide for the licensing and testing of autonomous vehicles; the other is an exemption from the ban on distracted driving that would allow drivers to send text messages while operating the vehicles. In Google’s testing program, each vehicle is overseen by a driver and a second Google employee who monitors the equipment from the passenger seat. The project is being guided by Sebastian Thrun, a professor of computer science and electrical engineering at Stanford University.