Further comments on regulatory options for autonomous vehicles [1]
Further comments have been sent from the ATA to the NTC concerning regulatory options for automated vehicles.
The initial submission [2] is also available.
In the additional comments, the ATA outlined four additional crucial areas for consideration. These are:
- Managing interactions with people and non-autonomous vehicles
- Managing maintenance requirements and vehicle standards
- Managing loss of driving skills and user alertness
- No-blame investigations into autonomous vehicle accidents
An emphasis has been placed on the point concerning no-blame investigations. Because of the complexity of possible autonomous vehicle accidents, traditional coronial investigations into fatal crashes will be inadequate.
No-blame investigations, such as those carried out by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau [3] into air, marine and some rail crashes, would be a far more suitable for determining how an autonomous vehicle crash occurred, and how to prevent it occurring again in the future. Assigning blame to a specific party will become increasingly difficult, and all parties should have the incentive to work together to pinpoint ways to improve the safety of these vehicles.