Nevada issues the first US autonomous vehicle licence

Background

An autonomous vehicle is a car that can handle some or all of the driving task without a person continuously working the controls. Before such a car can be tried on public roads, a state has to set terms: who may operate it, how it is marked, and what happens if something goes wrong. A vehicle licence of this kind is not the same as an ordinary driver's licence: the ordinary licence certifies a person, while this licence applies to a car used in a test programme. In Nevada, the legislature had allowed autonomous vehicles on its roads the previous year, and the law took effect on 1 March 2012^[1]. That created the legal basis for the state's Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) to issue a licence.

The first licence

On 7 May 2012, the Nevada DMV approved the first licence for an autonomous vehicle in the United States^[1]. The licence was issued for a Toyota Prius modified with Google's self-driving technology^[1]. The DMV said officials had tested the car on highways, in streets in Carson City and on the Las Vegas Strip before issuing the licence^[1]. The trials therefore covered highway driving and city streets, including the Las Vegas Strip, before the paperwork was approved. In general terms, highways test a vehicle at higher speeds, while city streets add junctions, pedestrians and other traffic. The DMV's account placed the Prius in both settings before the licence was approved^[1].

Conditions

The document was a testing licence. Breslow told Marketplace that two operators had to be in the car at all times^[2]. Test cars carried a bright red licence plate with a gold infinity symbol reading "Autonomous vehicle"^[2]. Breslow also told Marketplace that the vehicle owner would be responsible if something went wrong, and that a hard drive recorded the 30 seconds before an accident^[2]. Those conditions kept the licence tied to a supervised trial and created a record of the moments before an incident.

Reaction and plans

DMV director Bruce Breslow said in a statement that autonomous cars were "the car of the future"^[1]. The DMV said the state also planned eventually to license autonomous cars owned by members of the public^[1]. That goal went beyond a single test car: it looked ahead to a time when private owners could register autonomous vehicles. The first licence, by contrast, was for a test programme.

Why it mattered

The Nevada licence was the first of its kind in the United States^[1]. It showed a state regulator treating autonomous cars as vehicles that could be identified, supervised and recorded on public roads, rather than as an idea confined to private tracks. The special plate made a test car visible to others; the two-operator rule kept people in the car; and the recording rule addressed what would be known after an accident^[2]. The DMV's stated plan to license public-owned cars in time indicated that the first licence was a step in a longer process, not the end of it.