Google has been successful in getting United States auto safety regulators to ease up their rules when it comes to autonomous cars. The tech giant said that complex safety standards imposed by the regulators has direct effect in the development of autonomous and self-driving cars.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration recently approved the company's application to treat its self-driving system as a legal driver.

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 Before the approval, the NHTSA only considered humans as legal drivers.

Google sent a petition to the NHTSA for the latter to consider it's autonomous driving system as a legal driver in November 2015. The petition was filed by the director of Google's self-driving car project Chris Urmson.

Urmson urged regulators to treat Google's self-driving cars the same as human drivers, even if the cars are built without steering wheel or brakes,.

To be clear, the NHTSA letter to Google is not a final ruling but rather a clarification of how the agency will interpret the definition of legal drivers in the future.

In January, US Secretary of Transportation Anthony Foxx announced that his department will create a new guideline that will be the basis for regulations regarding self-driving cars. These regulations are expected to be finished and will be presented by June.

In a statement acquired by Reuters, Secretary Foxx said, "We are taking great care to embrace innovations that can boost safety and improve efficiency on our roadways. Our interpretation that the self-driving computer system of a car could, in fact, be a driver is significant. But the burden remains on self-driving car manufacturers to prove that their vehicles meet rigorous federal safety standards."

Tech experts believe that the NHTSA guidelines will agree with Google's interpretation driverless vehicles.

TagsNHTSA, Google, autonomous car, Self-Driving Car, Google self-driving car, Google autonomous car, autonomous car