The United States’ National Highway Traffic Safety Administration told Google that its artificial intelligence drivers could be considered the driver under federal law. Earlier the NHTSA only considered humans as drivers under law, making this a boost for autonomous cars. Google, which works under parent company Alphabet, has been developing self-driving cars in the last few years. It started with a fleet of Priuses, and has moved now a custom-designer pod car (picture above).

The current model is being tested in Google’s Mountain View campus in California. It submitted the model of its self-driving car to NHTSA in November last year, calling it a vehicle that “has no need for a human driver”. Senior analyst Kelly Brauer told Reuters that despite the announcement, there are still many legal questions surrounding such vehicles, but that the move could “streamline the process” of getting the vehicles on public roads.

California has proposed rules that still require steering wheels and a licensed human driver in all self-driving vehicles. Many automakers and tech companies are rushing to develop cars that can drive themselves at least some of the time. Google told NHTSA that their key concern was having the self-driving cars’ auto-safety features over-ridden by humans.