Developing the Regulatory Environment for Autonomous Vehicles: Historical Lessons for the Socio-technical Transition

Abstract

The shift to autonomous vehicles will be as, if not more, revolutionary than the transition from the horse-and-buggy to the personal automobile. By removing human error, which plays a role in 94 percent of automobile crashes, the deployment of autonomous vehicles can save thousands of lives. Our federal and state governments and scholars agree that autonomous vehicle technologies will also save billions of dollars by reducing collision costs and improving fuel economy, and will create social benefits such as reducing traffic congestion and providing mobility to thousands who were previously excluded from personal transportation options, such as the young, the elderly, and the blind. It is not debated whether autonomous technologies should be pursued, but whether technology is safe enough at the moment, and what type of regulatory environment will best promote safe innovation, testing, and commercialization of these technologies. This paper contributes to the regulatory dialogue by studying the major historical shift in transportation, from the horse-and-buggy to the personal automobile, to determine what parallels can be drawn between the historical shift and the current transition to autonomous vehicles. The parallels proved that lessons learned from the previous transition can help scholars and policy makers assess the status of the current transition and future of autonomous vehicle technology. This paper utilizes a multi-level, socio-technical lens to examine the historical transportation transition, placing emphasis on the formation of the regulatory regime for the personal automobile. A comparative analysis of the formation of the historical regulatory environment and developing regulatory environment for autonomous vehicles completes this study. This paper finds that the regulatory environment for autonomous vehicles is in its nascent form, marked by a lack of state-level regulatory uniformity and a lag in federal intervention that also characterized the historical shift in transportation. Lessons learned indicate that the NHTSA should mandate federal vehicle safety regulations for manufacturers of autonomous vehicles before commercialization, and the DOT should promote uniformity of state legislation in order to remove barriers to testing and future commercialization, and should fund autonomous vehicle infrastructures as the need presents itself. The developing regulatory environment for autonomous vehicles is following in the path of its historical counterpart and will become increasingly explicit and expansive as the perceived benefits of autonomous vehicles push government agencies and the public to pursue a new transportation landscape of autonomous vehicles.