The February 2016 issue of the Institute of Electrical & Electronics Engineers
(IEEE) Spectrum magazine has
a cover story by Nathan A. Greenblatt,
an intellectual-property lawyer in Palo Alto, entitled "Self-Driving Cars
Will Be Ready Before Our Laws Are".
Quote:
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Originally Posted by Nathan A. Greenblatt, IEEE Spectrum Magazine
It is the year 2023, and for the first time, a self-driving car navigating city streets strikes and kills a pedestrian. A lawsuit is sure to follow. But exactly what laws will apply? Nobody knows. Today, the law is scrambling to keep up with the technology, which is moving forward at a breakneck pace, thanks to efforts by Apple, Audi, BMW, Ford, General Motors, Google, Honda, Mercedes, Nissan, Nvidia, Tesla, Toyota, and Volkswagen. Google’s prototype self-driving cars, with test drivers always ready to take control, are already on city streets in Mountain View, Calif., and Austin, Texas. In the second half of 2015, Tesla Motors began allowing owners (not just test drivers) to switch on its Autopilot mode.
The law now assumes that a human being is in the driver’s seat, which is why Google’s professional drivers and Tesla owners are supposed to keep their hands near the wheel and their eyes on the road. (Tesla’s cars use beeps and other warnings to make sure they do so.) That makes the vehicles street legal for now, but it doesn’t help speed the rollout of fully autonomous vehicles.
It’s not only the law that’s playing catch-up but also the road system. We’ve invested billions of dollars [pdf] in a transportation infrastructure designed for human vision, not at all for computers. But it’s possible to make changes to the laws that govern the roads and the infrastructure, and those could go a long way toward making driverless cars the rule instead of the rare exception. |
IEEE Spectrum article, which contains many additional interesting hyperlinks, here -
http://spectrum.ieee.org/transportat...e-our-laws-are
Brookings white paper "Products Liability and Driverless Cars: Issues and
Guiding Principles for Legislation" by John Villasenor April 2014
http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/res...rless_cars.pdf