Many feats of engineering have or could grind to a halt due to legislative action. As the government should only concern itself with the well-being of the inhabitants – rightfully so --, advancements in technologies that require legal consent or action usually delays the process greatly. Autonomous cars are no different. Where I come from, Sweden, autonomous cars are just beginning to get into the hands of private owners. However, while the owners are private, they are granted a special permission from the government and, furthermore, act as beta tester – in this case for Volvo Cars.

As described before, the government should concern itself with safety. Thus, great effort has to be made in order to implement a reliable and correct framework for testing autonomous functions of car manufacturers. As fully autonomous cars would rely solely on the development work by the manufacturer, the tests must be extremely stringent. Furthermore, a rating similar to the “crash” rating of a car cannot exist, as all vehicles must fulfill all the requirements when replacing the human as a driver. As such, one would assume that the legal process will be a long journey.

Also, in order to “convince” people to start using autonomous vehicles at all, the legal debate regarding driver liability must be settled. As the vehicle is only as good as the software driving it, the human simply cannot be held responsible at-all in a crash situation, it’s up to the government to only approve vehicles that are safe on the road. If the government still deems the driver is responsible, one could assume that an angry mob of dissatisfied citizens would protest it. Yes, autonomous cars would greatly reduce the number of road accidents, but if it were to happen, the human has no control of it. As such, if humans are, by law, held responsible there is no point in pushing for this technology.