"Bryant Walker Smith, a professor at the University of South Carolina School of Law, tells Inverse that each of those vehicle types has its own set of rules to follow.
“The way law applies to Tesla’s Autopilot is different from how law applies to Uber’s supervised automated driving, and it’s different from how law might apply to a truly driverless shuttle,” Smith says. “That matters because really the devil is in the details.”
Smith published a paper in 2012 called “Automated Vehicles Are Probably Legal in the United States.” In it, he explained that driving laws don’t prohibit self-driving cars, which means they are legal. (“In the U.S. we start with a presumption of legality,” he notes. “Things are legal unless they’re explicitly illegal, not the other way around”)."
- Date Published:09/01/2016
- Original Publication:Inverse