Citation[]
Jonathan DiClemente, Autonomous Car Policy Report (May 2014) (full-text).
Overview[]
Fully autonomous vehicle (AV) is a promising technology that is expected to have a number of signifcant benefts to society: increased mobility, better utilization of lands, reduced costs of congestion or increased road efficiency, and dramatically decreased car accidents. This technology is still in its early stage and is far from being fully autonomous with several technical challenges yet to be overcome. The timeline of widespread autonomous car adoption is uncertain and contingent on a number of factors: legal, policy and public acceptance, infrastructure support, and the achievement of technological milestones.
To facilitate early market entry, it is essential to have more test miles, to educate policy makers and the public, and to advocate the technology. Based on literature review and expert interviews, it has been determined that lobbying is the most efective way to address the liability issue.
We believe the non-market strategy will be at least as important in ensuring the long-term success of this emerging technology. To address these issues, we propose a set of recommendations that are specifcally targeted to the Carnegie Mellon team working on autonomous vehicles.