US drivers will be able to remotely park their future BMWs

Depending on how much other stuff you’ve got in there, parking in a garage can be a right royal pain in the exhaust. It’s probably a good thing then that a growing number of car manufacturers are building vehicles that allow drivers to park their cars remotely.

Earlier this year, Tesla added remote parking to its autopilot functionality and now BMW has received the go-ahead to include the functionality in the US version of its new 7 Series.

While the feature is already available in European models of the German marque’s luxury saloon, current US legislation has prevented the technology from being available in that county.

The particular piece of legislation, Section S5.3 of Standard No. 114 of the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards, dictates “the service brake… be depressed before the transmission can be shifted out of park.'”

That’s a problem, because you can’t really depress a brake if you’re not actually in the car.

As Autoblog reports, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has acknowledged that the law is too vague and shouldn’t apply to the new 7 Series.

At this stage, it’s unclear how long the technology will take to roll out to the US, but if nothing else it shows how much work still needs to be done when it comes to laws around the world.