The road ahead for self-driving vehicles is littered with complications
BY ROGER COCHETTI, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR - 09/07/23 8:00 AM ET
The controversies in California over FAVs also reveal the pure governmental complexity of regulating FAVs. For many decades, America’s legal structure regulated automobiles, trucks and buses on the foundational notion that there is a licensed vehicle and a licensed human driver.
To oversimplify, vehicle safety and fuel economy are regulated by federal agencies; liabilities, driver and vehicle insurance, licensing vehicles and drivers and some fuel efficiency and vehicle safety standards are regulated at the state level; and many road regulations are set by local governments.
Trying to fit driverless vehicles into this matrix is quite difficult, mostly because essentially every regulation currently presumes there is a human driver.