Julia Picard

Matthew Wood is the vice president of autonomy, integrity, and validation at the AV company May Mobility.

He says engineers already use safety cases, but federal regulation would make them consistent, mandatory, and enforceable.

That means defining how a vehicle minimizes risk when something unexpected happens, from a sensor failure to a power outage or a protest in the street.

But even with federal safety requirements, city streets are still absorbing the steep learning curve of self-driving cars.

As AV companies strive to prove they're safe, it's worth mentioning human drivers kill over 40,000 people a year in the U.S.

Whether federal regulation can reduce that toll without creating new risks is the question.

I'm Julia Picard for Marketplace.