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By Bryant Walker Smith • May 27, 2013 at 5:25 pm
"Will lawsuits kill the autonomous car?" That's a dramatic expression of a common question. (And one to which Twitter has a short retort.) Here’s the conceptual answer that I’ve been giving for a year, now in blog form (with bonus Italics). Read more » about Uncertain Liability
By Bryant Walker Smith • April 15, 2013 at 11:58 am
By Bryant Walker Smith • July 31, 2012 at 1:58 pm
In honor of anyone who just took a bar exam, here's the wholly hypothetical scenario I used at last week's excellent multidiscliplinary workshop on road vehicle automation (with slight modifications): Read more » about A Self-Driving Crash Test
By Bryant Walker Smith • July 10, 2012 at 6:16 pm
A century later, driverless cars and trucks have the potential to revolutionize society as much as the horseless carriages that preceded them. This emerging technology raises important questions -- about legality and liability, privacy and security, even intellectual property and land use -- that demand thoughtful analysis from a variety of perspectives. For these reasons, I am excited to be teaching an inaugural seminar on the legal aspects of autonomous driving. This Fall 2012 course is open to Stanford University students who want to meaningfully advance that analysis. Law students should preregister by this Friday, July 13th, 2012; others should follow these steps. Read more » about Stanford Students: Fall 2012 Course on the Law of Autonomous Driving
By Bryant Walker Smith • June 20, 2012 at 7:06 am
California's autonomous driving bill (SB 1298) has undergone further amendment. Two observations: Read more » about Amendments to California's Autonomous Driving Bill
By Bryant Walker Smith • May 28, 2012 at 3:52 pm
In the United States over the next ten years, governments may spend some $1.5 trillion on their roadways, consumers may purchase vehicles worth nearly $3 trillion, property owners may develop millions of acres of rural land, and the US Postal Service may drive its cars and trucks approximately 12 billion miles (with FedEx alone adding 10 billion miles more). How might these massive numbers—and others like them—be harnessed to smooth the deployment of self-driving vehicle technologies? Read more » about Planning for Autonomous Driving
By Bryant Walker Smith • March 30, 2012 at 5:41 pm
Google has posted an inspiring video (with audio captions) of a legally blind individual riding in the front left seat of one of its self-driving cars as that car travels along a “carefully programmed route.” As the company prudently notes, the video is “a promising look at what autonomous technology may one day deliver if rigorous technology and safety standards can be met.” Both Google and a local police officer who assisted with the demo believe it to be legal. Read more » about On Blind Drivers and Base Maps
By Bryant Walker Smith • March 11, 2012 at 3:20 pm
• “Nothing is going to catch this car by surprise…. It’s going to see hundreds of feet in all directions. [You’re] not going to have a pedestrian ‘come out of nowhere’ or the ball coming to the middle of the street. This car senses a lot.”
• “Our cars are designed to avoid the kinds of situations that force people to make last-minute value judgments while driving.”
• “[Our car] always does the right thing.” Read more » about Driving at Perfection
By Bryant Walker Smith • March 11, 2012 at 1:35 am
On the final day of its regular scheduled session, Florida's Senate moved rapidly to unanimously pass CB/HB 1207, the autonomous driving bill that Florida's House had also passed unanimously a week Read more » about Florida Autonomous Driving Bill Heads to Governor
By Bryant Walker Smith • March 1, 2012 at 9:37 pm
*Note: Apply only if you have an autonomous vehicle with 10,000 miles under its belt and a million dollars (cash or bond) in its glove compartment.... Read more » about Apply Today!* Nevada's Autonomous Driving Regulation Takes Effect
By Bryant Walker Smith • February 24, 2012 at 9:05 am
California SB 1298 would expressly establish that California "presently does not prohibit or specifically regulate the operation of autonomous vehicles," direct the Department of the California Highway Patrol to "adopt regulations" regarding "specific safety requirements for the testing and operation of autonomous vehicles," and "not prohibit" such operation and testing prior to those regulations. The bill does not say who (if anyone) drives an autonomous vehicle in the legal sense, a question I asked about California's motor vehicle code in a post last month.
The bill's autonomous-driving-is-already-legal approach is similar to a proposed amendment to Florida HB 1207, though that amendment does state that "a person shall be deemed to be the operator of an autonomous vehicle operating in autonomous mode when the person causes the vehicle's autonomous technology to engage, regardless of whether the person is physically present in the vehicle while the vehicle is operating in autonomous mode." (But what if an automated system engages the autonomous technology?) Another such amendment would address liability following conversion of a vehicle to an autonomous vehicle.
Meanwhile, Arizona's bill failed in the House Transportation Committee after members expressed concern that it was too much too soon -- that is, the technology was not ready and the rulemaking burden on the state's Department of Transportation would be too great.
For a summary of all legislative and regulatory developments, see my wiki. Read more » about Autonomous Driving Bill Introduced in California (Plus Other State Developments)
By Bryant Walker Smith • February 19, 2012 at 7:45 pm
The automobile, noted one scholar in 1907, “is variously referred to as [an] auto, autocar, car, machine, motor, motor car, and other terms equally as common but neither complimentary nor endearing.” Motorists, for their part, included “brutes,” “fat-headed marauders,” “honking highwaymen,” and “flippant fool[s]” who wrote themselves “down both a devil and an ass.” One hopes the horseless carriages of the future will earn monikers that are more flattering. In the meantime, we are left with assorted technical phrases like “electronic blind spot assistance, crash avoidance, emergency braking, parking assistance, adaptive cruise control, lane keep assistance, lane departure warnings and traffic jam and queuing assistance” to describe cars that (already) help us drive them, and with competing terms like fully automated, fully autonomous, self-driving, driverless, autopiloted, and robotic to describe cars that (may someday) drive us. Read more » about My Other Car Is a ... Robot? Defining Vehicle Automation
By Bryant Walker Smith • February 15, 2012 at 1:55 pm
Nevada's Legislative Commission has approved the Nevada DMV's autonomous driving regulation, which will now take effect on March 1, 2012.
In other news: Want to help some Stanford students by taking a survey on vechicle automation? Read more » about Nevada Approves Autonomous Driving Regulation
By Bryant Walker Smith • January 31, 2012 at 9:12 pm
Nevada. Florida. Hawaii. Arizona. Oklahoma. As legislators move to expressly regulate automated driving, I’ll be tracking state-by-state developments on this wiki and discussing themes on this blog.
I’ll begin that discussion with a basic legal question: Who drives an automated vehicle? The answer might be no one—a truly driverless car in the legal and technical senses. It might be a natural person—the individual owner (if there is one), the occupant (ditto), or the individual who initiates the automated operation (ditto again). It might be a company—the corporate owner, the service provider, or the manufacturer. Depending on the context, it might even be some combination of these possibilities. Read more » about Backseat Driving
By Bryant Walker Smith • January 25, 2012 at 11:16 pm
And now both Arizona (with the introduction of HB 2679) and skyoneering Oklahoma (with the introduction of HB 3007). Read more » about Arizona and Oklahoma Legislators Introduce Autonomous Driving Bills
