How Will Autonomous Cars Affect Traffic Laws?

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As technology continues to advance almost faster than we can keep up, policy makers and legislators are going to have to develop laws to address things that might sound like science fiction. Autonomous cars, something that sci-fi writers have been pitching for a century, are seen as almost inevitable.

As the technology to have cars drive themselves becomes more realistic, we’re going to have to find ways to address the unique legal issues that such technology might raise.

A recent paper by professor Adam Millard-Ball of UC Santa Cruz argues that in a future dominated by autonomous cars, pedestrians might have significant advantages. This is because autonomous cars are being designed to be risk-averse, and to automatically stop in order to avoid hitting pedestrians. 

This could slow down traffic and even potentially cause gridlock due to the fact that autonomous cars are programmed to obey all traffic laws, including yielding to pedestrians, while drivers can choose which laws to obey and which ones to ignore in order to speed their commute.

While most drivers don’t want to hit pedestrians, either, human drivers can be distracted by any number of things, while an autonomous car would be able to stop no matter what. This could result in a world in which pedestrians just go wherever they want because there is significantly less fear of being hit by a car.

“From the point of view of a passenger in an automated car, it would be like driving down a street filled with unaccompanied five-year-old children,” writes Millard-Ball.

While this future may still be far away, it seems like a likely one, and policy makers are going to have to think about how to address it. What kind of traffic disruptions might this cause? Do we continue to enforce crosswalks, and can we even do that? Who is at fault if an automated car does manage to hit a pedestrian, or if in stopping to avoid hitting one, causes a collision? How do we design, and more importantly redesign, cities to take advantage of new opportunities and mitigate new dangers provided by this new technology?

There are two potential approaches outlined by Millard-Ball in his study. One is increased enforcement of jaywalking laws, eliminating crosswalks, and keeping pedestrians out of the street to by erecting fences between sidewalks and roadways.

The other, probably more feasible, approach is that planners could create more pedestrian-oriented streets and keep drop-offs on the fringes of urban areas.