Autonomous Vehicles and the Law 417
Hugh Pickens writes "Google's autonomous cars have demonstrated that self-driving vehicles are now largely workable and could greatly limit human error, but questions of legal liability, privacy and insurance regulation have yet to be addressed. Simple questions, like whether the police should have the right to pull over autonomous vehicles, have yet to be answered and legal scholars and government officials warn that society has only begun wrestling with laws required for autonomous vehicles. The big question remains legal liability for the designers and manufacturers as some point out that liability exemptions have been mandated for vaccines, which are believed to offer great value for the general health of the population, despite some risks. 'Why would you even put money into developing it?' says Gary E. Marchant, director of the Center for Law, Science and Innovation at the Arizona State University law school. 'I see this as a huge barrier to this technology unless there are some policy ways around it.' Congress could consider creating a comprehensive regulatory regime to govern the use of these technologies say researchers at the Rand Corporation adding that while federal preemption has important disadvantages, it might speed the development and utilization of these technologies (PDF) and should be considered, if accompanied by a comprehensive federal regulatory regime. 'This may minimize the number of inconsistent legal regimes that manufacturers face and simplify and speed the introduction of these technologies.'"
Re:I Guarantee (Score:5, Informative)
How, exactly, would the police pull over an autonomous vehicle if there was no way to remotely access it? Therefore, hedwards was correct: there will be a way to crack the security and force the car to pull over, thus rendering autonomous vehicles vulnerable to the highwaymen. Hmmm...sounds like it could be the plot to a cool sci-fi story...
Re:Why wouldn't police be able to? (Score:5, Informative)
And what would be the point of pulling it over?
You are assuming that all a cop wants to do is issue a citation. Here are some more plausible possibilities, just off the top of my head:
1) There's an emergency up ahead, and police need to stop all the vehicles headed in that direction to prevent the emergency from escalating.
2) The vehicle is driverless, but not necessarily riderless -- i.e., the police need to rescue a kidnapping victim, or apprehend a wanted felon/terrorist (hey, it's the current buzzword), or search for narcotics, or...
3) You gave other reasons yourself (namely, inspecting it for malfunction/damage or impounding it). In those cases, a citation may not be necessary, but it might be necessary to remove it from the road because it presents a hazard to others.
4) What if it's not properly tagged?
Keep in mind, if the vehicle is autonomous, it probably won't be speeding, it probably won't run red lights or stop signs, it probably won't be driving recklessly (unless it has faulty sensors). Unlike with human-piloted automobiles, I think issuing citations for anything other than expired tags would be rather unlikely.
Re: Police stops/"HACK!!!"/liability (Score:4, Informative)
Methuselah's Children (Score:3, Informative)
by Robert A. Heinlein. Orginally serialized in 1941 . The driver flips a switch in the dashboard to illegally overide the traffic stop BTW.