Bryant Walker Smith's blog

How Governments Can Promote Automated Driving recommended that governments conduct "legal audits" to "identify and analyze every statute and regulation that could apply adversely or ambiguously to automated driving." Automated Vehicles Are Probably Legal in the United States attempted this nationwide, and now the authors of Georgia's HB 248 have produced a bill that (while not perfect) reflects a tho

Uber is testing its self-proclaimed “self-driving” vehicles on California roads without complying with the testing requirements of California’s automated driving law. California’s Department of Motor Vehicles says that Uber is breaking that law; Uber says it’s not. The DMV is correct.

My recently completed article presents steps that governments can take now to encourage the development, deployment, and use of automated road vehicles. After providing technical and legal context, it describes key administrative, legal, and community strategies. It concludes by urging policymakers to facilitate automated driving in part by expecting more from today’s drivers and vehicles. 

In the spirit of the New Year, and especially in the wake of California's draft rules for the (theoretical) operation of automated motor vehicles, I offer two resolutions for any serious developer of an automated driving (or flying) system. Such a developer should:

There's recently been some great reporting and advocacy regarding the legal status of the software running modern motor vehicles. Here are a few academic perspectives (courtesy mostly of Facebook):

One of my courses this semester is Technology Law: Law of the Newly Possible. This seminar, at the University of South Carolina School of Law, examines how law responds to, incorporates, and affects innovation.

Road Vehicle Automation, which was inspired by the Transportation Research Board's eponymous 2013 workshop at Stanford, collects a variety of public, private, and academic perspectives on this nascent transportation revolution.

After a great deal of careful work, the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) today released its final rule for the testing of "autonomous vehicles" on public roads in the state. Accompanying this rule is a Final Statement of Reasons that, on page 9, contains a striking exchange:

Some ninety percent of motor vehicle crashes are caused at least in part by human error. This intuitive claim is a fine place to start discussions about the safety potential of vehicle automation. (It is not an appropriate place to end these discussions.