What are the Laws on Driverless Cars in the State of Nevada?



Today is the four year anniversary of driverless cars being allowed on Nevada roadways. During the 2011 legislative session, the Nevada State Legislature enacted Chapter 482A, entitled “Autonomous Vehicles”, allowing for driverless vehicles to hit the roads in Nevada. These laws went into effect on March 1, 2012.

Nevada was the first state to allow driverless cars to apply for their own drivers' licenses. However, the DMV currently only allows test cars on the road. So, autonomous vehicles are not currently available to consumers. To make sure safety comes first, Nevada requires two trained drivers to be in every car, one of them in the front seat prepared to take control of the car should an emergency arise. To get the green light to drive on Nevada roadways, companies also have prove that one or more of their automated cars have been driven for at least 10,000 miles. 

How can you tell if you are driving next to an automated car? Driverless cars have a red Nevada license plate, with an infinity symbol. In Nevada, who has these automated car licenses? Mercedez-Benz, Google, Kia, and the Freightliner Inspiration Truck are some of the companies testing autonomous cars in Nevada.

Thinking ahead, Nevada has said that when autonomous vehicles are eventually made available for public use, drivers will be required to obtain a special driver license endorsement and the DMV will issue green license plates for the vehicles. For more information, you can go to the DMV’s website at  http://www.dmvnv.com/autonomous.htm.

In addition to the Nevada State Legislature and the Nevada DMV, Governor Sandoval, has also recently said that he would allocate resources through the Office of Economic Development, toward the autonomous car industry, in a bid to become the leader in testing and development of driverless cars.

How safe are automated cars? There have been a few studies which show that driverless cars still get into accidents like normal cars. But, it is usually because of the fault of regular drivers. The most common accident type, is a driverless car being rear-end by a regular driver who thinks the driverless car is going to proceed through an intersection but doesn’t.  Also, in a recent test, a driver had to take over the wheel when an automated car wasn’t sure it could trust regular drivers to let it maneuver through a multi-lane roundabout.

Bigger issues have come up that involve human, ethical decisions. Since the cars have to be pre-programmed to make life-or-death decisions in an accident, questions have come up as to whether an autonomous vehicle should sacrifice its occupant by swerving off a cliff to avoid killing a school bus full of children. Other questions have come up as to whether its acceptable to tell the vehicles when it’s okay to break the rules, such as crossing a double yellow line to avoid a bicyclist or road workers. These issues have resulted in lawmakers requiring a driver to be in the car, to take over the wheel when necessary.

Google, one of the forerunners in automated cars, wanted to develop a car with no steering wheel or gas pedal. Nevada (and California) have both rejected this approach. This was much to the disappointment of Google.

This is an exciting topic and will be revisited when new developments happen in the advancement of automated cars.

Next time, we will discuss when your conversations with your lawyer may not be protected under the attorney-client privilege.

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