Balancing Interests in Automated Vehicle Regulations Across Six Jurisdictions
ResearchPosted on rand.org Mar 12, 2025Published in: ARTSymposium 2023 Conference Proceedings, Road Vehicle Automation 11, pages 32-48 (2024). DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-67466-2_4
This chapter discusses the legal regimes for regulating automated and autonomous vehicles (AVs) across selected jurisdictions (To maintain consistency throughout this chapter, we use the term "AVs" to refer to vehicles equipped with systems that automate driving highly or fully (Levels 4 and 5 in the SAE taxonomy). Other terms are also used to refer to this technology (e.g., "self-driving," "intelligent and connected") which may vary by jurisdiction). Findings are drawn primarily from RAND research and an ARTS 2023 breakout session that provided an overview and discussion of the current state of AV deployment and regulation in various jurisdictions. The chapter highlights seven areas of AV legal regimes that offer rich comparisons: regulatory focus on safety, assignment of liability, influence of SAE definitions, testing and government oversight, concerns with data, equity, and deployment models. The chapter explores how different legal regimes are balancing competing interests and discusses potential policy considerations and implications for public welfare.
This publication is part of the RAND external publication series. Many RAND studies are published in peer-reviewed scholarly journals, as chapters in commercial books, or as documents published by other organizations.
RAND is a nonprofit institution that helps improve policy and decisionmaking through research and analysis. RAND's publications do not necessarily reflect the opinions of its research clients and sponsors.
