When the Lawyers Come for Autonomous Vehicles
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About the author: Clifford Winston is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.
A new specialization is emerging in the legal profession: autonomous-vehicle law. This innocent-sounding news is my personal nightmare, and it could soon become the nation’s. Autonomous vehicles are a game-changing technology that can solve problems the government has been unable to solve, but their adoption will be disrupted by a disinterested federal government dominated by public- and private-sector lawyers.
An autonomous vehicle drives itself using a combination of navigational technologies and onboard technologies that measure the distance of the car from various objects, including pedestrians, bicyclists, and other cars. Communications among AVs, as well as between AVs and roadway infrastructure, determine the location and intention of other