Google driverless car AP

Google, Ford, and Uber are pushing the federal government to come up with rules and regulations that will allow driverless cars to hit the road.

The three companies have formed a coalition dubbed the Self-Driving Coalition for Safer Streets, with David Strickland, formerly of the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), serving as the group's spokesman, according to a press release.

"What people are looking for is clear rules of the road of what needs to be done for (fully autonomous) vehicles to be on the road," Strickland said in a Reuters interview Tuesday. "Nobody wants to take a shortcut on this."

The announcement of the coalition coincides with the second of two public forums that the NHTSA is holding today on self-driving car guidelines.

Google made a big push for driverless car regulations in March when Chris Urmson, director of self-driving cars under Google X, urged the Senate to allow for the creation of federal laws that would allow driverless cars to hit the road.

The tech giant suffered a blow in its driverless car plans when California released draft regulations that would require a driver to sit behind the wheel of even fully autonomous cars and undergo special training in addition to having a license. If passed, those regulations would make it harder to get driverless cars to the market, and could drive companies to test in other states.

The new coalition will push the federal government to come up with rules and regulations for driverless cars, helping bring the new technology to market faster than creating rules state by state would.

"The leadership of the federal government is critically important given the growing patchwork of State laws and regulations on self­-driving cars," Urmson said to the Senate at the time.