"The cars could, however, be kicked off the road if regulators aren’t thrilled with the idea of autonomous vehicles roaming the country, says Bryant Walker Smith, an assistant professor at the University of South Carolina School of Law and affiliate scholar at the Center for Internet and Society, who studies self-driving vehicles. There are laws prohibiting reckless driving, for example, and “a state or local law enforcement agency could use these provisions to target” the cars “if they believed the vehicles to be dangerous.” That could lead to a revoked registration, or refusal to register cars going forward.
There are no federal regulations in place yet, but based on a 2013 non-binding statement, NHTSA isn’t hot on the idea of consumer operation of autonomous vehicles just yet. It “could also attempt to intervene if it has evidence that automated vehicles are not reasonably safe,” Smith says."
- Date Published:03/23/2015
- Original Publication:Wired