The Vermont Agency of Transportation is doing some early planning for  driverless cars. And the agency’s director of planning and research says he’d like to see how the experimental vehicles test on road conditions here.

Fifty-two companies, including Apple, Waymo, Tesla, Ford, Honda, BMW, Nissan, Intel and Uber, are currently working on them. To test them out companies in California are issued permits by the motor vehicle department for testing on tracks and on state roads. For the earliest road excursions, they were required to have a safety driver, but current permits for streets and highways with speed limits of up to 65 miles per hour at any time of day, as well as during inclement weather, are now issued that don’t require a human being in the driver’s seat.

However in several areas where driverless car testing is taking place people are not reacting well. In both California and Arizona people are hassling and even attacking automated test vehicles.

Out of the six self-driving car collisions last year in California, two happened when people-driven cars intentionally rammed them. And in San Francisco a pedestrian crossed a street to shout at and then body slammed a test car at a traffic stop.

Attacks on test cars in Arizona, where a driverless Uber vehicle struck and killed a pedestrian in March are notably more aggressive. In that state tires have been slashed, shots fired at vehicles and general harassment is occurring.

Some people have pelted Waymo [owned by Alphabet, the parent of Google] vans with rocks, according to police reports. Others have repeatedly tried to run the vehicles off the road. One woman screamed at one of the vans, telling it to get out of her suburban neighborhood. A man pulled up alongside a Waymo vehicle and threatened the employee riding inside with a piece of PVC pipe.

One man who was issued a warning by police for driving head-on at a test vehicle said: “They said they need real-world examples, but I don’t want to be their real-world mistake,” said Mr. O’Polka, who runs his own company providing information technology to small businesses. “They didn’t ask us if we wanted to be part of their beta test,” added his wife, who helps run the business.

Driverless cars may soon be coming to Vermont where the Agency of Transportation is doing some early planning for allowing testing of driverless cars here. Recently on VPR and in Vtdigger.com the agency’s director of planning and research, Joe Segale, said: “One of the reasons I’m interested in seeing these vehicles tested in Vermont is to see how they can handle driving on our back roads,”

He said he believes self-driving cars could have many benefits in a rural state like Vermont. For instance, Segale said, artificial intelligence technology could keep drivers safe in snowy or icy weather conditions, and create more efficient and affordable modes of transportation.

That last bit: “artificial intelligence technology could keep drivers safe in snowy or icy weather conditions” may be the toughest one as every Vermont driver knows. And notably the state transportation agency winter guidelines and radio PSAs for Vermont currently warns drivers to turnoff cruise control on snow and ice covered roads because of how rapidly conditions change.

For now the legislature, the AOT and the state police are working on issues such as registration, testing permits and of course, autonomous vehicle insurance liability. Who pays: manufacturer, owner, or operator? I’d be willing to bet this proves to be almost as problematic as getting self-driving technology to work safely on our back roads.