(Bloomberg) – Self-driving cars must increase safety atleast twofold to make a real dent in the 38,000 lives lost onAmerican roads last year, the U.S. auto-safety chief said as thefederal government prepares to release rules for autonomousvehicles next month.

"I'd actually like to throw the gauntlet down," Mark Rosekind,head of the National Highway TrafficSafety Administration, said Wednesday at a conference in Novi,Michigan. "We need to start with two times better. We need to set ahigher bar if we expect safety to actually be a benefit here."

Rosekind wouldn't disclose specifics of the autonomous-autoregulations he said U.S.Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx will announce in July.The NHTSA chief said those rules will speed the deployment ofself-driving cars, which should begin to reduce road deaths thatjumped last year to 38,300 from 32,675 in 2014.

"It's a 747 crashing every week for a year, that's what thelosses are on our highways," Rosekind said at the TU-Automotive Conference. "And that isunacceptable."

Accelerated activity

Several thousand driverless cars will sold in the U.S. in 2020and grow to almost 4.5 million sold during 2035, researcherIHSAutomotive said in a forecast released Tuesday. Globally, 21million of the vehicles are expected to be sold in 2035, more thandouble IHS's prediction two years ago. IHS cited acceleratedactivity and deal-making in driverless cars, such as General MotorsCo.'s investment in ride-hailing company Lyft Inc. and FiatChrysler Automobiles NV's alliance with Google to create about 100self-driving minivans.

"Global sales of autonomous vehicles will reach nearly 600,000units in 2025," Egil Juliussen, research director at IHSAutomotive, said in a statement. "Our new forecast reflects a 43%compound annual growth rate between 2025 and 2035 — adecade of substantial growth, as driverless and self-driving carsalike are more widely adopted in all key global automotivemarkets."

Potential lifesaver

Safety regulators welcome automated driving as a lifesaverbecause NHTSA estimates that 94% of all road deaths are the resultof human error. The challenge is to overhaul 1960s-era safetyregulations that never contemplated removing the human from behindthe wheel. The U.S. agency earlier this year ruled that Google'sself-driving software is the equivalent of a human driver.

In January, Foxx said NHTSA planned to issue guidelines on safe deployment ofautonomous vehicles within six months. They would include howself-driving cars should be tested and the benchmarks that must beachieved to allow them on public roads.

Rosekind said Wednesday that the rules to be announced nextmonth will provide "deployment and operational guidance for how toget all of these autonomous new safety technologies on the roadsafely."

State model

NHTSA also will provide a "model state policy" for localregulations of autonomous vehicles to "help support a uniform,consistent framework" of rules for manufacturers and travelers, hesaid.

In addition, the agency will identify "new tools and authoritiesto really help advance if not accelerate getting these newtechnologies on the road safely."

President Barack Obama's proposed 2017 budget calls for spending$3.9 billion on autonomous-vehicle technology over the next 10years. Congress has not yet acted on his request.

"We are witnessing a revolution in auto technology that has thepotential to save thousands of lives," Foxx said in March. "Inorder to achieve that potential, we need to establish guidelinesfor manufacturers that clearly outline how we expect automatedvehicles to function — not only safely, but more safely— on our roads."