Self-driving cars just found a new home: Virginia highways.

The Old Dominion state on Monday opened up more than 70 miles of highways in Northern Virginia — including some of the most crowded roads in the country — for autonomous vehicle testing, according to a report from the Richmond Times-Dispatch. That includes portions of Interstates 95, 495, and 66 along with U.S. 29 and U.S. 50, which are now being called "Virginia Automated Corridors."

The move makes Northern Virginia one of the first areas in the U.S. to allow testing of fully self-driving cars on public roads, in addition to California, Nevada, Michigan, Florida, and Washington, D.C.

The Virginia Tech Transportation Institute is overseeing the research, and the state's Department of Transportation and Department of Motor Vehicles are partners in the initiative, as is Nokia's Here mapping division. Before hitting public roads, vehicles will need to take a spin around the institute's test tracks and be certified that they're safe enough for the highways, the Times-Dispatch said. The cars will also be required to have a driver behind the wheel, just in case the technology malfunctions.

"Next-generation vehicle technologies can help transform our transportation system, from enhancing safety to supporting driver convenience," Tom Dingus, director of the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute, said in a statement. "Our goal with the Virginia Automated Corridors is to ensure automated-vehicle developers and suppliers have access to both a robust roadway environment and significant research support to create, test, and deploy systems that are beneficial to users."

At this point, there's no word as to which self-driving car makers will be taking advantage of the new public test roads in Virginia. As the report notes, the congested Northern Virginia roadways will require self-driving cars to "adjust to new information on the fly, such as traffic jams or construction that temporarily closes a lane."