Brian Lear on WNYC and yes New York City may have just taken a major step toward

allowing driverless cars on its streets. Are you scared yet? Mayor Eric Adams

and the City's Department of Transportation unveiled a set of safety requirements

for autonomous vehicle testing.

They unveiled it last week.

They also announced a new permitting program for companies that want to test the technology on a street near you.

Now to be clear and to be fair, these autonomous vehicles as they they're called, won't immediately be driverless

anytime soon.

One of the newly released safety requirements is for a trained driver to be behind the wheel, at least for now.

So what exactly does driverless or autonomous mean

in New York City, and what exactly are we in for?

Let's ask Sam Schwartz, former longtime gridlock Sam columnist in the

Daily News, former New York City Traffic Commissioner, President and CEO of Sam

Schwartz Pedestrian Traffic Management,

and author of the book, which is six years old now,

so this is not a brand new topic.

No one at the wheel, driverless cars

and the road of the future.

Sam always great to have you. Welcome back to WNYC.

Thank you, Brian.

So let me ask you the 101 question first for people who are just getting their heads around even this

concept what's a driverless car autonomous car, roboo car whatever you want to call it how

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