Autonomous driving vehicles are advancing faster than the laws that govern them so it comes as little surprise some basic questions still haven’t been resolved.
The latest example comes from California where the executive director of the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, Tilly Chang, asked the state’s department of motor vehicles to “define how law enforcement officers will interact with [autonomous] vehicles in situations such as parking and traffic violations.”
As reported by Arstechnica, Chang also called on the DMV to force automakers to hand over all “autonomous technology data and/or video recordings” in an event that an autonomous vehicle is involved in an accident.
Automakers and trade groups, on the other hand, want California to relax its regulations and let the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration handle the government response.
As the manager of the Association of Global Automakers, Paul Scullion, explained “Our concern is that if each state were to impose [its] own regulatory regime [this] would delay the deployment of lifesaving technology.” Scullion also noted the patchwork of individual state laws could make a car perfectly legal in one area but against the law in another.
Both sides pose some fair questions but unfortunately everyone is still waiting for a government response.
