Michigan becomes latest US state to legalise autonomous vehicles
Michigan has become the latest US state to legalise the testing of autonomous cars on its roads. Governor Rick Snyder has given the green light to firms, including Lyft, to operate networks of self-driving taxis in the state, reversing 2013 legislation which required the presence of a human driver. Nevada, California, the District of Columbia, Florida and Tennessee have all passed similar laws, but David Strickland, counsel for Self-Driving Coalition for Safer Streets, has called on the government to provide a national regulatory framework.

You can hardly blame Michigan for trying to scarf down its piece of pie before someone swipes it off their plate. The Wolverine State just became one of the first in the country to formally give the thumbs-up to autonomous cars on public roads, with no driver in the front seat.

Friday, Governor Rick Snyder put his signature on bills permitting automakers to operate networks of self-driving taxis in the state.1

The legislation reverses a 2013 law that required autonomous vehicles to have a backup driver aboard, and comes as the home teams move toward delivering the tech for real. Ford has pledged to deliver fleets of fully autonomous cars, without a steering wheel or pedals, by 2021. GM has partnered with ride-hailing tech company Lyft to create a fleet of electric self-driving taxis in the next five years or so.

“As near as I can tell from the language and the context, what’s going on is a specific effort to implement a specific regime for a specific company,” says Bryant Walker Smith, a legal scholar with the University of South Carolina School of Law who studies self-driving vehicles.

To date, five states---California, Nevada, Tennessee, Florida, and Michigan---and the District of Columbia have passed laws dealing with autonomous driving. As you'd expect, these laws aren't exactly identical. Rather, the 50 states are looking more like 50 mini-policy labs, where lawmakers, government officials, academics, and, yes, the big company players shape regulations to fit their specific needs.

So you get why Detroit is angling to keep Silicon Valley's hands off its Motor City title. "The fact of the matter is 75 percent of all the companies that are doing research and development in this space are in southeast Michigan," says Kirk Steudle, the director of the state's Department of Transportation. The new laws encourage them to stay put.

The Self-Driving Patchwork

As future-friendly as these rules are, not everyone's thrilled. “States play an important role in road safety, such as licensing and registration, but the federal government should provide the national framework to prevent a patchwork of state laws and regulations,” David Strickland, counsel for Self-Driving Coalition for Safer Streets, which represents Ford, Google, Lyft, Uber, and Volvo, said in a statement.

Indeed, the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration has created model legislation for governing autonomy, in a bid to get each state on the same page. The industry likes the idea, because the idea of making 50 variations of a car to match 50 sets of laws promises to be a nightmare.

Even today, you can see the problems: When an autonomous Audi prototype crossed from California into Nevada in January 2015, the engineers had to pull over at the border and screw on the special license plate the Silver State requires. What's inconvenient on a demo ride could prove to be a major pain in the trunk when the tech reaches the masses. (Although lobbyists would certainly make bank trying to convince hundreds of lawmakers all over the country that their way is the best way.)