Page - (000621) - in Autonomes Fahren - Technische, rechtliche und gesellschaftliche Aspekte

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.