The way we regulate self-driving cars is broken—here’s how to fix it

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Last month, an Uber self-driving car struck and killed pedestrian Elaine Herzberg in Tempe, Arizona. The tragedy highlights the need for a fundamental rethink of the way the federal government regulates car safety.

The key issue is this: the current system is built around an assumption that cars will be purchased and owned by customers. But the pioneers of the driverless world-including Waymo, Cruise, and Uber-are not planning to sell cars to the public. Instead, they're planning to build driverless taxi services that customers will buy one ride at a time.

This has big implications for the way regulators approach their jobs. Federal car regulations focus on ensuring that a car is safe at the moment it rolls off the assembly line. But as last month's crash makes clear, the safety of a driverless taxi service depends on a lot more than just the physical features of the cars themselves.

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