At the moment self-driving cars can be tested on the streets in public, but there is a catch and that is a human driver is required to be behind the wheel at all times to take control of the car should anything go wrong. However it seems that over in California, the state’s DMV has stated that fully driverless cars can be tested on roads as soon as this April.
However naturally there needs to be some kind of fallback system in case anything goes wrong, and according to the DMV, companies who wish to test out these kind of systems will need to be able to remotely control the car via a human operator. This means that while human intervention is still necessary in the event of an accident or mishap, they don’t actually need to be in the car to do so.
Given how that there are some who believe that in the future cars and taxis could be powered by AI and drive to pickup passengers and fetch them to their destinations, testing out such a system would go a long way in help further such efforts. As it stands several companies developing self-driving cars already have such systems in place, such as Waymo and Nissan.
However according to the DMV, for companies that don’t have such systems, they will be allowed to hire third-party companies to handle remote operation.
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