The deputy director of the National Highway Traffic Safety Management took on Google

As you know, Google unmanned cars hit more than 483,000 km on US roads. For all the time of the tests, two accidents were registered - both happened when the laser radar worth 70 thousand dollars was turned off and a man got behind the wheel.

The safety of unmanned vehicles is one of the most important issues that Google has to work on. Unfortunately, most of this work lies not in the technological, but in the legal sphere. All experts admit that technology has been ahead of the regulatory framework for many years.

Thus, in order to promote robotic cars, it is necessary to refine not only technologies, but technical regulations and traffic rules, which are under the jurisdiction of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).
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NHTSA is a division of the US Department of Transportation that develops vehicle safety standards, licenses car manufacturers and importers, and also manages the vehicle identification number system. In general, it is a kind of analogue of the Russian traffic police.

It is understandable why, since January 2013, the deputy director of the NHTSA agency, Ron Medford, is moving to Silicon Valley . He was invited to the position of director of security for self-propelled cars Google. An experienced official will help Google in negotiations on the admission of unmanned vehicles on public roads, along with the usual transport. It will help speed up the development of the regulatory framework and adopt the correct rules of technical regulations.

Ron Medford is a key NHTSA leader with an impeccable reputation and 40 years of experience in government agencies. Medford has been working in traffic safety management since 2003, he has been involved in all new NHTSA programs in recent years.

In May 2012, the Nevada Motor Vehicle Dept. (DMV) issued a license to Google for the movement of autonomous vehicles on general roads. The first license plate in Nevada received a modified version of the Toyota Prius.

By September 2012, the states of California and Florida were also allowed to test cars on any roads. Autonomous cars in Nevada are equipped with license plates of a special type, on a red background with an infinity symbol. After testing, robotic cars will be issued not green but green license plates. The Nevada Department of Transportation expects this to happen in about 5 years.

Google expects to be able to bring unmanned vehicles to the mass market within 10 years. At the same time, representatives of the NHTSA administration recently reported that they need two to three years to research before they begin to draw up safety standards, technical regulations and a list of tests for licensing autonomous cars. Traffic safety management staff on the highways are in constant consultation with Google and other autonomous car developers. Ron Medford should help Google go through all the necessary tests and bureaucratic procedures in his native NHTSA.


^{Computer vision system in Google cars}