A car wends its way through a line of taxis in the Las Vegas rain, carefully steering around a tangle of sedans vying for passengers. As the black Lincoln MKZ gets closer, the steering wheel saws back and forth, but there’s no one in the front seat. In fact, there’s no one in the car at all.

It’s disquieting to be picked up by an empty car, and it’s something of a milestone: Inside most autonomous research vehicles cruising public streets, there’s a minder to keep a watchful eye and take control should things go awry. But with the MKZ, there was no human custodian. At least not one within view.

Hundreds of miles away, Ben Shukman, a software engineer for Phantom Auto, was sitting in front of a phalanx of video screens in Mountain View, Calif. Using a live, two-way video connection along with the kind of steering wheel and pedals usually reserved for video games, he was driving the MKZ.

While major technology and car companies are teaching cars to drive themselves, Phantom Auto is working on remote control systems, often referred to as teleoperation, that many see as a necessary safety feature for the autonomous cars of the future. And that future is closer than you might think: California will allow companies to test autonomous vehicles without a safety driver — as long as the car can be operated remotely — starting next month.