Road rules for robots: Driverless car legislation in California
California’s status as the country’s epicenter for technology and innovation is potentially at risk when it comes to new driverless technology. While California has approved 27 licenses for test driverless vehicles on its roads, it imposes relatively strict regulations on how they can be operated. For example, they must be occupied by a trained professional and all crashes or disengagements (when a human takes control) must be publicly reported. The other states to have passed legislation have taken a much less restrictive approach. For example, Kirk T. Steudle, director of the Michigan Department of Transportation, has stated that the most recent bill allows autonomous vehicles on any road for any reason.
I suspect that the more relaxed stances on regulation are partly an attempt to establish a new industry in otherwise economically struggling states. For instance, Uber moved its fleet of autonomous driving cars to Arizona after California refused it permits in December last year.
The benefits of increased driver safety, reduced traffic congestion, and productivity boosts are up for reaping but legislators are still relatively conservative as they attempt to tackle a range of potential externalities. First impressions matter and a series of fatal mishaps early in the era of the self-driving car could prove catastrophic for their reputation. Below I provide a brief discussion on two of the most contentious issues being discussed: cyber-security and safety.
Safety
Are artificial robots better drivers than humans? Wait, let me rephrase that to “do robots text or drink while driving?”. Human error is estimated to be responsible for 90% of the 3000 road deaths on Californian roads. Laser-fast sensors and real-time communication with other cars make computers far superior drivers when compared to our lacking attention spans and slow reaction times. But this is assuming they function correctly. Can we trust manufacturers when it comes to the safety of their products? To test whether a human is capable of driving we require persons to undertake driving tests, but when it comes to robots manufacturers may be able to effectively self-stamp their driving license. This has forced lawmakers to consider adopting third-party testers of all vehicles. Furthermore, in the case of massive glitches, the government of California may require all machines to be remotely accessible by trained professionals.
Cyber-security
Autonomous driving will require a number of computer systems in order to execute driving commands and communicate with other vehicles. These present opportunities for hackers, thieves, and terrorists to compromise the decision-making integrity of the vehicle. Worryingly, interfering with the $10,000 spinning lidar system required for autonomous driving is not necessarily difficult. Jonathan Petit, a cyber-security expert, was able to confuse the sensors with a $43 setup and a laser pointer. Introducing laws for remote access, as mentioned above, and encryption may help address some of these concerns however it does not guarantee the prevention of attacks. A centralized system for monitoring vehicles may become a necessity to ensure that an ecosystem of self-driving vehicles is behaving correctly.
Unfortunately, this solution compounds another problem. Self-driving technology would enable both manufacturers and the government to track the location, personal data, and activity of millions of people.
While many of us may look forward to the world without idle the chit-chat in an Uber, it’s obvious that first we must carefully navigate many hurdles. In particular, balancing rider safety with the security and privacy concerns mentioned above will most likely be the dominating roadblock ahead. The states have asked and the federal government has hinted towards introducing country-wide rules to avoid a patchwork of inconsistent laws, especially since these issues have the potential to impede on people’s rights. Whatever the solution is, it’s going to require input from politicians, manufacturers and most importantly the citizens in order to properly implement the next revolution of the modern age.
Sources:
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/20/technology/self-driving-cars-guidelines.html
[2] http://www.businessinsider.com/driverless-cars-hacking-ricks-2016-12
[3] https://www.wired.com/2017/03/californias-finally-ready-truly-driverless-cars/
[4] http://www.who.int/violence_injury_prevention/road_safety_status/2013/en/
[5] http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2014/04/the-latest-chapter-for-self-driving-car.html
[6] http://fortune.com/2017/03/10/california-driverless-car-testing/
4 comments on “Road rules for robots: Driverless car legislation in California”
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Insightful post! Could you more specifically break down the privacy issues that you mentioned? Thanks
Thanks Loic! The main privacy concerns arise from the collection of data and how they are handled. This could lead to a few potential outcomes. Firstly, a poor security ecosystem may result in data being hacked by third-parties like foreign governments, thieves and terrorists. Due to the sensitive nature of location data this could potentially endanger the safety of citizens. The other half of the issue arises from the commercialisation of data. Imagine third parties either paying for extra services with manufacturers or purchasing it from them for advertising purposes. A simple example to make it more clear: consider you ask your car to take you to a coffee shop on the way to work and recommends you to stop by Peat’s. You later find out that Peat’s was not the most efficient place to stop and wasted an extra 10 minutes of your morning. As you can see there’s a large potential for advertisers to start having an even larger influence on our daily live. I got the above example from The Atlantic article (linked below), I’d definitely recommend giving it a read if you’re interested!
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/03/self-driving-cars-and-the-looming-privacy-apocalypse/474600/
Hello Sidharth!
Nicely written blog! It is really intriguing to see how big, and critical an issue, having rules and regulations for driverless cars is. I have read atleast three other blog posts regarding the same where in they discussed about UK having passed its Modern Transportation Bill which enlists an entire array of rules for driver less cars, from who to hold responsible to the very specific laws.
Thanks Saran! I’m actually pleasantly surprised how willing governments are to enact these types of legislation. My instinct would have told me they would be hesitant to introduce new and relatively untested technologies (in the sense that there hasn’t been a large-scale experiment with many driverless cars). Hopefully they are doing it for the right reasons!