Regulating driverless cars

According to WP, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is in a big hurry to issue "aggressive" regulations on driverless cars.   The regulations are likely to encompass "how and where they expect their vehicles to operate, how they will interact with other cars and the roadway, how they validate their testing, how they intend to protect privacy and prevent hacking, and how they would share data collected by onboard computers."

Two ways of looking at this.  The good news is that one set of federal regulations will make compliance easier than 50 sets of state regulations.  The not so good news is that the feds are insisting on pre-market approval with testing monitored by an independent party.  This looks like a sure way of putting the US behind other countries in the race to develop this new technology.  

Driverless car experiments are already taking place.  Hopefully the industry and the regulators can wait until there is more certainty about how such cars are likely to operate before coming up with a regulatory framework.