Law Changes Required As We Enter the Age of the Driverless Car

A report commissioned by the UK Government and published last week believes that human drivers should and could not be held legally responsible for road safety when we enter the age of driverless cars, that is unless there are some pretty major changes in the law.

The conundrum is whether the person sitting behind the wheel is technically a driver and thus, if the vehicle on autonomous mode infringes the law (ie. speeds) or is involved in an accident, is the driver responsible or the company that created the autonomous system.

The report recommends that one of the key changes to the law would be to redefine the person behind the wheel as the “user-in-charge” even if they are sitting in the back having a nap or other things…

This may sound like a mere semantic change, but the reality is that changing the terminology will make a real difference. Well, at least according to the Law Commission of England that wrote the report.

Until the time when the law is changed, the report recommends manufacturers need to be very clear: they must state whether the car is autonomous or not – no sliding scale. Furthermore, in extreme weather, the car should not be considered autonomous and normal driving rules should apply.

The Law Commission has been working on the report along with Thatcham Research since 2018 and it comes just in time as the UK government has already given the green light for Automated Lane-Keeping systems (ALKS) to be used on British roads. ALK is the first hands-off-the-wheel driving aid to be legal in the UK, but it still needs the person-in-charge to be behind the wheel and in a position to take over within ten seconds should the need arise. Of course, you can go a long way in ten seconds.

But it is not all plain sailing for autonomous driving. Tesla, one of the pioneers of autonomous features, has gotten into a lot of bother over their marketing of ‘Autopilot’, which is similar to ALKS and considered a mere level 2 autonomous system on the scale of five defined levels of self-driving cars.

In California, a driver of a Tesla who jumped a red light and resulted in an accident with two fatalities has been charged with vehicular manslaughter, a first for someone driving an autonomous car.