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Regulation and the Risk of
Inaction600
Relying exclusively on companies to advance specific legal changes, however, can tend
to preserve the status quo. Unlike conventional cars, low-speed shuttles and delivery robots
generally have neither existing markets nor established companies to advocate for them.
As a result, these applications of automation have been largely ignored in recent legislative
and regulatory initiatives [22]. Accordingly, governments should also consider whether a
dearth of specific proposals or concrete data can be explained by an inability rather than a
disinclination to participate in the regulatory process.
In a sense, governments should approach policymaking with the same philosophy un-
derlying public support of physical infrastructure and scientific research: Initiate what the
private sector cannot or will not do. Broad mandates or basic conditions may be useful in
driving or policing innovation, but attempts to closely tailor rules to products that do not
yet exist could produce law that is premature and prejudicial.
27.3.2 Delegate the Safety Case
Vehicle automation is putting state regulators in a difficult position. Prominent examples
come from Nevada and California, the two states whose departments of motor vehicles
were directed to quickly enact regulations governing automated vehicles and automated
driving.2 These regulations seek both to provide greater legal certainty to the developers of
automated systems [16], [26], [31] and to restrict unreasonably dangerous products and
practices [23].
Many states, however, already empower regulators to restrict the registration, modifica-
tion, or operation of road vehicles on the basis of safety [19]. A New York statute, for ex-
ample, permits the motor vehicle commissioner to “refuse to register any vehicle or class
of vehicles for use on the public highways where he determines that the characteristics of
such vehicle or class of vehicles make such vehicle or vehicles unsafe for highway opera-
tion” [14].
Alternative approaches to deploying automation systems, including pilot projects and
aftermarket modifications, may implicate this authority more quickly than would tradition-
al rollouts [22]. Long before the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration
(NHTSA) promulgates rules for automated vehicles3 or even conducts investigations into
incidents involving them, state regulators may be facing – or at least actively ignoring – the
question of whether to revoke the registration of a vehicle retrofitted with a novel automa-
tion system.
Answering such a question will inevitably frustrate these regulators [31]. There is no
consensus about how to define, or then how to demonstrate, the appropriate level of safety
2 Other states have enacted automated driving statutes without expressly requiring this rulemaking.
3 NHTSA has historically promulgated performance standards only for safety technologies that
have already been widely deployed, although the eventual regulation of vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V)
communications systems is likely to be an exception.
Autonomes Fahren
Technische, rechtliche und gesellschaftliche Aspekte
Gefördert durch die Daimler und Benz Stiftung