Self-Driving Cars; Legal, Social, and Ethical Aspects

Mahmood Hisham Shubbak, December 2013

Table of Contents

Abstract ................................................................................................................................................... 1

Introduction ............................................................................................................................................. 2

Road Safety Figures ................................................................................................................................ 2

Historical Overview ................................................................................................................................ 3

Now and Then ......................................................................................................................................... 3

How self-driving cars work? ................................................................................................................... 4

The Advantages ...................................................................................................................................... 5

Legal Aspects .......................................................................................................................................... 5

Self-driving cars in the current laws ................................................................................................... 5

Comments and Recommendations ...................................................................................................... 7

Social and Ethical Aspects .................................................................................................................... 10

Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................ 10

Glossary ................................................................................................................................................ 11

References ............................................................................................................................................. 12

Words in italics are explained in the Glossary at the end of this research paper.

Abstract

Road safety statistics show a large number of casualties due to traffic accidents all over the world,

which challenges the researchers and vehicle manufacturers to develop new technologies to reduce. In

the last few years, vehicles that are capable of navigating autonomously (without a driver) have been

developed and are expected to be released to the market in the near future. The testing of these cars is

legally allowed in three American states, and some tests are also being conducted in some European

countries. This new technology has many potential advantages; however the use of such cars in public

roads can raise many questions. In this paper, the legal, social, and ethical questions of self-driving

cars are raised, in order to figure out to what extent the current applicable laws and regulations can

answer them. The legal questions are sorted into six groups; reliability, insurance, regulations,

behaviours, liability, and security questions, while the social and ethical questions are grouped into

three categories; privacy, behaviours, and social impact. Moreover, some legal ideas and

recommendations for the future laws are suggested. To achieve a better understanding of the topic, a

brief description of the autonomous cars’ technology and components is also provided.

Keywords: self-driving cars; autonomous vehicles; regulations; liability

Self-Driving Cars; Legal, Social, and Ethical Aspects

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Introduction

Imagine yourself in the morning, getting into your car, but instead of driving it through the

rush-hour traffic jam, keeping focused on the road, other cars, pedestrians, and traffic signs,

instead of all that, you just ask the car to drive for you, while sitting down in your seat

relaxing, drinking a cup of coffee and checking your email or reading the newspaper. And

once you reached your work, instead of searching for a parking place to stop your car idly for

eight hours, you simply ask it to make its way back home, so that other members of your

family can use it.

Self-driving cars have long been a human dream that appeared in many science fiction

stories, TV programmes and movies, such as KITT in the 1982 TV series; Knight Rider,

Batmobile in the 1989 film; Batman, and many others. But in the last few years, as the

technology has rapidly developed, this dream became very close to come true.

As this paper is being written, some automobile manufacturers, research groups, and

corporations like Google are developing and testing fully autonomous vehicles that are

expected to be available in the market within few years, which raises many legal and social

questions and doubts regarding this new technology.

The main purpose of this paper is to raise these questions and to figure out to what extent the

available laws and regulations can answer them. Moreover, some legal ideas and

recommendations are suggested.

To achieve a better understanding of the legal, social and ethical aspects of the adoption and

use of self-driving cars, a brief explanation of the need for this technology, its development

with time, advantages, challenges, and how it works, is provided.

Road Safety Figures

Statistics show horrible numbers of human casualties; deaths and injuries, as well as large

material losses, caused yearly by traffic accidents around the world.

In its mortality and global health estimates of 2011, the World Health Organization stated

that road injury is the worldwide leading cause of death for young people of ages 5 to 29

years old (WHO 2011); their figures also show that the total traffic related deaths are more

than 1,260,000 yearly. More than 50,000,000 injuries are yearly reported worldwide because

of traffic accidents (PRB 2006).

Even in the leading developed countries, traffic accidents are considered as a serious issue;

alone in the United Kingdom, a total of 195,723 casualties of all severities in road accidents

were reported to the police in 2012, of these 1,754 were deaths (DfT 2013).

Furthermore, “the direct economic costs of global road crashes have been estimated at US$

518 billion” in 2003 (WHO 2004, p.5).

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Many studies have been conducted to study the causes of traffic accidents, e.g. in his study

Rumar (1985) shown that 93% of car accidents in USA and the UK are related to human

error.

Historical Overview

In light of the previous figures and facts, automobile manufacturers have invested more time,

money and effort to provide their cars with safety means, table 1 below summarizes the main

advanced driver assistance systems, the year when they were first introduced, and by which

car manufacturer.

Table 1: Advanced Driver Assistance Systems

Driver Assistance System Year (first

introduced) Manufacturer Reference

Car GPS Navigation 1995 GM (Lendino 2012)

Adaptive Cruise Control 1995 Mitsubishi (Mitsubishi 1998)

Lane Departure Warning System 2001 Nissan (JSAE 2001)

Collision Avoidance System 2002 Mercedes (Daimler 2013)

Automatic Parking 2003 Toyota (CNN 2003)

Lane Change Assistance 2006 Volvo (Volvo 2006)

Traffic Sign Recognition 2008 BMW (Snook 2008)

By a quick look into (table 1), it can be easily recognised that by the beginning of the 21th

century, technology has evolved very closely to realise the dream of self-driving cars. The

American military believed in this, in 2004 the US Defense Advanced Research Projects

Agency organized the first long distance competition for fully autonomous cars in the world;

DARPA grand challenge 2004, although no one of the participating teams succeeded in

reaching the finish line, it can be considered as a significant milestone in autonomous cars

development (Garza 2012).

In the second version of the challenge 2005, a fully autonomous robotic car; Stanley,

developed by a team of Stanford University and Volkswagen Research Laboratory, has

navigated the 212 km route through Nevada Desert, to become the first robotic car to win the

$2 Million prize of DARPA grand challenge (DARPA 2005).

Now and Then

After the technological concept was successfully proven in DARPA 2005, the leading

automobile manufacturers as well as the well-known web services provider; Google,

announced that they are developing and testing autonomous cars, expected to be released to

the market within the next few years;

By 2016, Tesla expects to release cars that can operate autonomously for 90% of distance

driven (Waters and Foy 2013).

By 2018, Google expects to release their self-driving cars (Nichols 2013).

After 2020, GM, Daimler, Nissan and BMW expect to sell self-driving cars (White 2013).

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Autonomous technology is expected to be a standard feature included on most new vehicles

by 2050 (Litman 2013).

How self-driving cars work?

In figure 1 below a brief description of the autonomous technology and its components is

shown.

Figure 1: Self-Driving technology main components

To sum up, the autonomous car is controlled by a central computer using specific localization

and path planning algorithms that can make all the driving decisions, plan the suitable routes,

follow them, and respond to any possible road circumstances that may encounter it (Thurn

2012). To do so, it depends on:

1. Its accurate maps and street view images, such as Google Maps and Street View.

2. The data collected by sensors; Global Positioning System (GPS), Cameras, Laser

Imaging Detection and Ranging (LIDAR), Radars and Ultrasonic.

3. As well as some data received via internet connection.

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The Advantages

Based on the digital machine characteristics and capabilities, autonomous cars’ developers

believe that their technology will have many advantages, such as:

1. Reducing traffic accidents (Eno 2013), e.g. the developers of Google Self-Driving Car

believe that it can reduce traffic accidents’ casualties to the half (Thurn 2010), This

belief is due to several reasons, including:

a. Computers have faster reaction time than human drivers.

b. They are not temperamental or emotional, and cannot be subject to

psychological effects.

c. They cannot be drunk or under the influence of drugs, and do not fall asleep.

2. Reducing traffic congestion, due to:

a. Smaller safe gaps between cars will be needed.

b. Cars Platooning (Iliaifar 2012).

3. This leads to more roadway capacity (Litman 2013).

4. Very useful for old or disabled people such as blinds.

5. Elimination of redundant passengers, which means more efficient use of cars.

6. Improving fuel efficiency, especially in cars platooning due to the drafting

phenomenon. As well as environmentally friendly (Thurn 2010).

Legal Aspects

Any new technology is usually faced by legal questions and doubts, but when it comes to

technologies that are much related to human safety, like self-driving cars, the challenges for

lawmakers are more critical.

The main legal questions can be summarized as follows:

1. The Reliability Question: How safety can be guaranteed?

2. The Insurance Questions: How the insurance laws and costs will be affected?

3. The Regulatory Questions: about the vehicle registration, driver license

requirements, age limit, and tests.

4. The Behavioural Questions: about driving behaviours such as: speed limits, safe

gaps and drunk driving. As well as the response to police officers.

5. The Liability Question: Who will be responsible when there is an accident?

6. The Security Question: What are the consequences if the technology is hacked?

In the next subsection, a brief summary of the existing laws is provided; in order to figure out

to what extent they can answer these questions.

Self-driving cars in the current laws

In its 76th regular session in June 2011, the Nevada Legislature passed the assembly bill

number 511 that authorizes the operation of autonomous vehicles on highways within the

state (NELIS 2011). One year after, Florida became the second state to recognize the legality

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of autonomous vehicles in July 2012, bill CS/HB 1207 (Florida 2012), followed by California

in September of the same year, Senate Bill No. 1298 (California 2012).

Although “there is no UK legislation governing autonomous vehicles” (POST 2013), the

government announced that driverless cars are tested on public roads by the end of 2013

(BBC 2013).

In Germany, Daimler and Karlsruhe Institute of Technology tested in September 2013 an

autonomous prototype of Mercedes-Benz S-class for about 100 km from Mannheim to

Pforzheim under a legal agreement with the government bureau (Grünweg 2013).

By studying the previously mentioned laws and references, the following notes can be

concluded:

1. Traffic regulations in general are based on the Vienna Convention on Road Traffic

(1968) that requires a driver to be in control of the vehicle at all times.

2. The current laws for autonomous cars try their best to comply with the convention.

3. They are made for prototypes’ testing purposes.

4. They direct to establish minimum safety standards for autonomous vehicles and their

operation.

5. They require the following prerequisites to allow testing self-driving cars on public

roads:

On the manufacturer: to obtain an instrument of insurance, surety bond, or proof of

self-insurance prior to the start of testing, for instance 5 million dollars are required in

the American states (Florida 2012) (California 2012).

On the operator of the technology:

a. A driver to be seated in the driver’s seat, and to be capable of taking over

immediate manual control of the vehicle in emergency cases.

b. The driver should hold a car driving licence, in Germany an additional special

license for autonomous cars is also required (Grünweg 2013).

c. The driver should be solely of the employees, contractors, or other persons

designated by the manufacturer of the autonomous technology.

On the vehicle (California 2012):

a. To have an easily accessible mechanism to engage and disengage the

autonomous technology.

b. To have a visual indicator for the autonomous made.

c. To have an alert system, in case of technology failure, that requires the operator

to take manual control of the vehicle, and if he cannot do so, it has to do a

complete stop.

d. Its autonomous technology has to meet safety standards.

e. To have a separate mechanism to capture and store the autonomous technology

sensor data for at least 30 seconds before a collision occurs while the vehicle is

operating in autonomous mode.

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f. The data shall be captured and stored in a read-only format, and shall be

preserved for three years after the date of the collision.

Comments and Recommendations

Although these laws and regulations are designed for the vehicle’s testing purposes, they

have very good points that can still be used in the permanent legal model of the autonomous

vehicles.

Establishing safety standards for the vehicles and the technology can provide a partial answer

for the reliability question. Similarly, the alert system for technology failures and the data

storing consequences in the case of collisions can provide a partial answer for the liability

question.

Except for testing purposes, the current laws do not provide clear answers for most of the

insurance, regulatory, behavioural, and security questions.

In the remaining part of this section, some legal ideas and recommendations are provided for

answering the six legal questions.

1st The Reliability Question:

The question of safety and reliability is mainly related to the worries of the technology

failure, so it can be answered by eliminating the sources of this failure.

System failures can occur due to:

1. An internal error in the technology; software and/or hardware. (can be eliminated by

setting high quality standards, and using backup systems)

2. Inappropriate roads or surrounding conditions. (can be solved by executing a

surroundings preliminary check)

3. Running out of power. (can be solved by preliminary and frequent fuel checks)

Standards:

- As mentioned clearly in the current laws, common high standards for both the hardware

and software should be applied on the manufacturers.

- For example, the instrumentations and sensors should be proved to withstand tough

conditions of temperature and pressure etc.

- Standards on the program codes and algorithms should also be enforced.

Backup systems:

- The concept of backup systems is commonly used in the aviation industry. In their report,

the UK parliamentary office of science and technology, suggested the application of this

concept in the self-driving cars as a safety factor to compensate any system failing.

(POST 2013)

- For applying this concept, three system types are suggested to be used:

1. The main active system (system in operation).

2. Spare backup systems working in parallel, capable of taking control in failure

scenarios.

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3. Monitoring System; continuously watching the active system to detect any failure,

and store the sensor information.

Preliminary checks:

1. As a preparatory step for the technology release, a comprehensive study of all the roads in

terms of their readiness, capability, and appropriateness for the new technology is

suggested to be done. After that, the self-driving mode can only be enabled in the capable

roads. This should be enforced in the software.

In other words, an updateable list of the allowed roads, in which the self-driving mode

can be used, should be generated by the motor vehicles and safety departments. When the

operator selects the self-driving mode, the car computer shall first read the GPS data,

determine the current position, look it up in the allowed roads list, and decide whether to

enable the self-driving mode or not.

Moreover, for increasing the reliability of this technology, the road-related rules -such as

speed limit and other traffic signs- should be included in the car maps, and the path-

planning algorithms should read these signs internally from the maps, rather than using

the camera and the image processing algorithms.

This can lead to the idea of smart roads, which are interactive with the autonomous cars,

e.g. the traffic lights transmit wireless signals that can be received and understood by the

car’s computer.

2. In the software: the car should perform a preliminary scan for the surrounding

environment; including, but not limited to, the light intensity, visibility, and the cleanness

of the sensors surfaces.

3. In the software too, when selecting the journey route, the algorithm should take into

consideration the actual fuel levels, which should be checked prior to enabling the self-

driving mode, and frequently during the journey. And if the fuel level goes under specific

limit, an alternative route -includes stopping in a gas station - should be chosen.

2nd

The Insurance Questions:

A comprehensive insurance for the self-driving car and its operator should be obligatory by

the law. Moreover, the manufacturers of the self-driving technology should also be obliged to

pay a specific ratio of the insurance expenses that cover the vehicle in its autonomous mode

of operation.

“The insurance industry would need to update their processes as current risk modelling is

based on the behaviour of a human driver” (POST 2013).

Predicting insurance costs changes is quite difficult. “In theory, robocars should drive the

‘insurance’ costs down because of the reductions in collisions. However, if the cost per

collision is much higher even though the number of collisions drops, there is uncertainty over

whether autonomous vehicles will save money for both parties.” (Pinto 2012 cited Templeton

2012).

3rd

The Regulatory Question:

Additional to the normal licences for both cars and drivers, a special type of licences should

be applied for robotic cars and their users. To obtain a robotic driving or vehicle license,

Self-Driving Cars; Legal, Social, and Ethical Aspects

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special tests have to be passed, for example, drivers should have the ability of responding to

system failures and dealing with sudden control transfer while operating (POST 2013).

Each car should undergo functionality tests for its technology. This should be done yearly in

order for the vehicle license to get renewed.

The developer of the autonomous technology has to add a feature to automatically disable the

autonomous mode once the robotic car license expires.

After passing the safety and proper functionality tests, the licensing department will re-enable

the autonomous mode of the vehicle for a new period.

4th

The Behavioural Questions:

Most of the behavioural regulations, such as speed limits and safe gaps, should not be

changed, at least in the first stages of adoption, since the majority of the cars on roads will be

non-autonomous (driven by humans).

Even drunk driving should still be forbidden in the early stages of adoption, to make sure that

the driver can take control of the car in system failure. After the new technology proves its

safety by practical experience on the public roads for a reasonable period, a built-in

Breathalyzer should disable the manual driving mode and activate the autonomous mode,

when the driver is drunk.

Obedience to traffic policemen can be guaranteed by adding new feature to the police radar;

enables it to send wireless stop order to the autonomous car, this procedure should be

monitored in the police records.

5th

The Liability Question:

It will be hard for manufacturers to avoid liability for safety problems with their robotic cars

(Pinto 2012) (Gurney 2013), how will they find justification for legislative protection?

(Brown 2013).

The existing traffic accident liability rules in the European countries can be classified into

three types of accident compensation regimes; fault liability, strict liability and road traffic

insurance (Van der Heijden and Van Wees 2001).

The road traffic insurance regime, used in Sweden, seems to be the most suitable for

autonomous cars; when an accident occurs, the damages will be automatically compensated

by the insurer of the involved vehicles.

The storing of pre-collision data, as introduced in California (2012), can provide a very clear

method for determining the responsible party for the accident.

Remote retrieving of the accident data via internet - or the mobile phone network by inbuilt

SIM card (POST 2013) - should be done by police under certain regulations, to save time,

efforts and traffic congestion due to accidents’ investigation.

If this investigation finds that the responsibility lies on the autonomous car, the technical

details and conditions of the accident should be sent to the technology manufacturer to search

for the source of the problem and fix it within a specific period set forth by the lawmakers. If

Self-Driving Cars; Legal, Social, and Ethical Aspects

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the manufacturer was not able to update his technology within that time limit, he will be

obliged to withdraw the product from the market.

6th

The Security Question:

This question is mainly about hacking and cyber-attacks. Since autonomous cars are

controlled by computer, and can be connected to the web or the mobile phone network, such

attacks seem to be possible.

Security experts see very low probability for it. “It would take too much time, expertise,

money and hard work to hack into the multitude of computer systems.” (Krisher 2013)

In case of any cyber-attack, the same liability procedure of system failure should be applied.

Social and Ethical Aspects

These aspects can be summarized in three groups:

1. Privacy Issues.

2. Behavioural Issues, such as cars without driver inside, allowing children to ride it

alone, or its use by disabled people (e.g. blinds)

3. The Social Impact: on driving careers (taxis, buses, driving schools etc.)

Some good answers for the privacy and behavioural issues are introduced in the California

(2012) law. For example it forces the technology manufacturer to provide a written disclosure

to the purchaser of an autonomous vehicle that describes what information is collected by the

autonomous technology.

Moreover it declares that “the department shall hold public hearings on the adoption of any

regulation applicable to the operation of an autonomous vehicle without the presence of a

driver inside the vehicle” (California 2012).

Since the new technology will need long time before it fully replaces the human drivers, its

behavioural as well as social impact issues are expected to be solved gradually over time.

Each new technology replaces some human careers, but it usually creates many new others.

Conclusion

Self-driving cars will be on our roads in few years, raising many legal, social and ethical

challenges, for which the lawmakers should provide reasonable answers.

Benefiting from the current laws as well as the manufacturers testing experience on public

roads, more comprehensive laws should be issued, taking into consideration all the adoption

and using aspects of the new technology; starting from standards level, insurance, licensing,

behaviours, liability, and ending with privacy and cyber-security issues.

Proper regulation as well as successful experience will hopefully open the door for this

technology to be used in wider applications that will definitely improve the traffic safety, and

might shape a new future for roads and transportation planning.

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Glossary

Autonomous Car: (also known as driverless, self-driving, or robotic car) is a vehicle that can

navigate without the active physical control or monitoring by a human operator (California

2012).

Breathalyzer: a device for estimating blood alcohol content from a breath sample.

Drafting (Aerodynamics): the reduction of the overall effect of drag on a moving object due

to the slipstream of a larger lead object.

Fault Liability: “a type of liability in which the plaintiff must prove that the defendant's

conduct was either negligent or intentional” (Hall 2002)

Public hearings: the opportunity for the public members to voice their opinions and provide

input to the board on a particular issue.

Strict Liability: the imposition of liability on a party without a need of proof of fault (such as

negligence or tortious intent) (Cantú 2002).

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