Welcome to the Tech Policy Podcast. I'm Evan Sportsdriver. On today's show, driverless cars.

This is a particularly hot topic these days as driverless Ubers hit the streets in Pittsburgh,

and as testing of this new potentially life-saving technology goes on in places like California and Nevada.

Recently, NHTSA, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration,

put out guidelines, regulatory guidelines, on how driverless cars should operate.

Joining me to discuss this is Mark Scribner,

research fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute,

which put out an article responding to the Obama

administration's proposed rules on driverless cars. Mark, thanks for joining the show.

Hi, thank you for having me. So I've been reading some of the press around this issue, and a lot of it

is favorable. It says that this is an example of government regulating in a smart way,

recognizing the potentially

life-saving value of driverless cars and allowing the freedom to innovate while protecting

consumers.

There's been a lot of cheerleading.

Are you coming here with sour grapes or what do you think about these rules?

I mean, is this something to celebrate or something to be skeptical about?

I think by and large, the guidance document fills a void and positively so where the feds hadn't

acted and states were really questioning of how they were going to attempt to implement

state-level policies.

Howard, that being said, a lot of the positive press doesn't get into the nitty-gritty,

and there are some things that are fairly troubling that we'd want the agency to address,

...