Governing autonomous vehicles: emerging responses for safety, liability, privacy, cybersecurity, and industry risks

Abstract

The benefits of autonomous vehicles (AVs) are widely acknowledged, but there are concerns about the extent of these benefits and AV risks and unintended consequences. In this article, we first examine AVs and different categories of the technological risks associated with them. We then explore strategies that can be adopted to address these risks, and explore emerging responses by governments for addressing AV risks. Our analyses reveal that, thus far, governments have in most instances avoided stringent measures in order to promote AV developments and the majority of responses are non-binding and focus on creating councils or working groups to better explore AV implications. The US has been active in introducing legislations to address issues related to privacy and cybersecurity. The UK and Germany, in particular, have enacted laws to address liability issues; other countries mostly acknowledge these issues, but have yet to implement specific strategies. To address privacy and cybersecurity risks strategies ranging from introduction or amendment of non-AV specific legislation to creating working groups have been adopted. Much less attention has been paid to issues such as environmental and employment risks, although a few governments have begun programmes to retrain workers who might be negatively affected. ARTICLE HISTORY

Algorithmic Decision-Making in AVs: Understanding Ethical and Technical Concerns for Smart Cities

“…More research is required to address the high costs and low scalability of many system verification tools for AVs. It is also important to supplement these verification tools with adaptive policies and regulation that involves knowledge generation through investigative programmes, reviewing that knowledge such as through safety review boards and altering safety requirements in tandem with technological developments [41,145]. Other technical issues include the detection of inevitable sensor failures and cybersecurity risks.…”

“…At Level 3 (conditional automation), the vehicle can perform all dynamic driving Sustainability 2019, 11, 5791 3 of 28 tasks such as steering, acceleration, and monitoring the environment, but the human driver is required to resume control occasionally [39,40]. Vehicles classified under Levels 4 and 5 of autonomy are considered highly and fully autonomous respectively as they can engage in all the driving tasks without human intervention [41].…”

“…At Level 3 (conditional automation), the vehicle can perform all dynamic driving Sustainability 2019, 11, 5791 3 of 28 tasks such as steering, acceleration, and monitoring the environment, but the human driver is required to resume control occasionally [39,40]. Vehicles classified under Levels 4 and 5 of autonomy are considered highly and fully autonomous respectively as they can engage in all the driving tasks without human intervention [41].The implementation of vehicles at Levels 4 and 5 is now possible due to rapid technological advancements in hardware and software systems-sensor-fusion technology and computer vision allow the vehicle to detect, trace and manoeuvre safely around obstacles and under a wide range of environmental conditions [42,43]; High-performance computing enables the vehicle to process vast amounts of data to understand its environment and make spontaneous driving decisions; and communication technologies enable the vehicle to exchange information with and learn from other vehicles [44,45]. Given the accelerating technological developments and roll-out of AV trials, AV technology is expected to advance rapidly and surpass human capabilities over time [38].…”

A multicriteria decision making approach to study barriers to the adoption of autonomous vehicles

“…In contrast, an increase in either of them can be driven by, as well as result in, an increase in the other. Recently, US governments have enacted a new legislation known as the SPY Car Act on data privacy that provides jurisdiction to the NHTSA to protect the use of driving data in all vehicles manufactured for sale in the US (Taeihagh and Lim, 2019). This is likely to favour customers" acceptance of AVs.…”

Is tomorrow’s car appealing today? Ethical issues and user attitudes beyond automation

“…Recently, a few researchers have argued that a wider range of user concerns should be researched Taeihagh and Lim 2018). have conducted a stakeholder workshop, which showed that stakeholders in the UK worry about additional aspects of AVs than those addressed in autonomous car innovation trajectories, e.g., cyber security, data ownership, sustainability, energy use and air quality, equity and access.…”