With everyone from Audi to Google to Volvo developing autonomous vehicles, the federal government is cautiously getting behind the wheel to regulate how self-driving cars should be operated and legislated. But its recommendations are far from clear-cut, underscoring just how far behind the times Washington is with regard to emerging technology.

Still, by stepping into the fray and attempting to codify when, where and how autonomous vehicles are developed and deployed, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is all but admitting that the day is coming when we'll all let the robot drive.

"America is at a historic turning point for automotive travel," the agency said in its preliminary statement on autonomous cars. "Motor vehicles and drivers’ relationships with them are likely to change significantly in the next ten to twenty years, perhaps more than they have changed in the last one hundred years."

NHTSA and its parents at the Department of Transportation see the value of autonomous vehicles, including the possibility such technology could greatly reduce the number of crashes and fatalities, thereby saving hundreds of billions of dollars in societal costs, and enable people with a range of disabilities to enjoy a new-found level of mobility.

But more than anything, the feds are trying to keep ahead of the technological curve – a constant challenge to both regulators and legislators – while ensuring safety remains the utmost priority.

"We're encouraged by the new automated vehicle technologies being developed and implemented today, but want to ensure that motor vehicle safety is considered in the development of these advances," NHTSA Administrator David Strickland said in a statement. "As additional states consider similar legislation, our recommendations provide lawmakers with the tools they need to encourage the safe development and implementation of automated vehicle technology."

In other words, legislating the future is hard.These "tools" prove to be an odd blend of excessively specific and overly broad definitions, categorizations and commandments, providing further proof that it's difficult to legislate something that hasn't been fully realized.

Then again, that's why NHTSA is calling this a "preliminary statement of policy concerning automated vehicles," and not proposing sweeping federal laws to govern the technology. But it is the first step in a four-year-long process to examine every facet of autonomous tech, from testing to licensing to full-scale implementation.

Beyond looking at autonomous vehicles, NHTSA is gathering information about vehicle-to-vehicle communications and in-vehicle crash avoidance systems that warn drivers of an impending collision and can take evasive action on behalf of the driver.

"NHTSA finds that it is helpful to think of these emerging technologies as part of a continuum of vehicle control automation," according to the statement.

In that same vein, NHTSA outlines five levels of vehicle automation. Level 0 – as its name implies – means no automation (think a 1971 Chevy Vega), while Level 1 includes such standard safety tech as stability control, ABS, adaptive cruise control, and pre-charged brakes to help slow down a vehicle before a collision. Level 2 ties at least two of those systems together to provide semi-autonomous driving, like setting a vehicle in Traffic Jam Mode that keeps the car in its lane and within a safe following distance of the vehicle ahead. Level 3 is the vehicular equivalent of Google's autonomous cars, allowing users to cede almost all control to the robot pulling the strings. And finally, there's Level 4, which means you simply type in your destination and take a nap.

On that last level, NHTSA concedes that, "At this point, it is too soon to reach conclusions about the feasibility of producing a vehicle that can safely operate in a fully automated (or “driverless”) mode in all driving environments and traffic scenarios."

Within the next two years, NHTSA plans to have researched the human factors involved in autonomous vehicles, including the transition from automated to driver-controlled, the division of labor and specific driver training requirements. The agency also hopes to have enough research to determine the safety and efficacy of such systems when it comes to security, fail safes and diagnostics in the next four years. But that research hinges on the introduction of these technologies, and according to NHTSA, "This research is complicated by the fact that only a few level 2 systems currently exist, even fewer level 3 systems exist and their technical details are constantly in flux, and no level 4 systems are known to exist at this time."

Photo: Google

In other words, legislating the future is hard.

"In general, we believe that states are well suited to address issues such as licensing, driver training, and conditions for operation related to specific types of vehicles," NHTSA says, but adds. "NHTSA has considerable concerns however about detailed state regulation on safety of self-driving vehicles."

But that's where the clarity ends and the cognitive dissonance begins.

NHTSA maintains that autonomous vehicles are not currently ready to test on public roads, although it is "encouraged by innovations in automated driving and their potential to transform our roadways."

Just as confusingly, it wants companies to supply states with information on how safe their systems are before putting them on the road, but "NHTSA does not recommend that states attempt to establish safety standards for self-driving technologies... [due to] the rapid evolution and wide variations in self-driving technologies."

So NHTSA wants to make companies like Google prove that their technology is sound, but don't want states to enact legislation that would set such safety standards.

The agency also suggests that states create license categories – called "endorsements" by various state departments of motor vehicles – specifically for those operating autonomous vehicles, though it doesn't say what earning such a license might entail. Regulators also insist, in no uncertain terms, that autonomous vehicles must be certified for testing, and that any autonomous technologies do not displace or interfere with government-mandated safety equipment. They also want automakers to provide state authorities of any "incidents" involving the vehicles, such as crashes or any instances where a human must take control of the vehicle.

The overarching sense of the fed's preliminary policy on autonomous vehicles is that they want rules, but don't want to inhibit innovation; they don't want to pass laws at the federal level (just yet), but don't want individual states going it alone. With California, Florida and Nevada (and soon, Michigan) having autonomous vehicle legislation in place, the feds are in the precarious place of attempting to be ahead of the curve, but not being able to see beyond it.