Autonomous Vehicle Regulation and Trust

Abstract

The autonomous vehicle (AV) industry works very hard to create public trust in both AV technology and its developers. Building trust is part of a strategy to permit the industry itself to manage the testing and deployment of self-driving vehicle technology without regulatory interference. The AV industry supplements its appeal for trust by extolling a plethora of public benefits that AV technology supposedly will bring to society. In this article, we examine the behavior of certain AV industry participants in various concrete situations, considering whether actions by these AV industry participants promote trust or, conversely, create concerns. To evaluate whether a particular action promotes trust, we consider both common sense intuitions as well as recommendations contained in three publications with intended global applicability: (i) the recently published IEEE Standard Model Process for Addressing Ethical Concerns during System Design (IEEE 7000); (ii) Ethics Guidelines for Trustworthy AI; and (iii) Policy and Investment Recommendations for Trustworthy AI. These publications inform our analysis of practices that merit trust (and helps us identify those that do not). Our analysis identifies certain trust destroying practices, suggesting that the public should not accept either AV industry appeals for trust or take at face value the proffered narrative of benefits. We perceive a need for more regulation by federal, state and local governments. Despite our concerns, we discuss how the AV industry might earn trust by changing its adversarial approach to law, regulation and disclosure, starting by compliance with standards promulgated by the engineering community. AV industry participants should shift to cooperation with lawmakers and regulators by embracing engineering standards relating to safety, such as SAE J3018, and ethical principles which promote trust, such as identified in IEEE 7000. SAE J3016 should be replaced as a regulatory standard by a simpler rubric which promotes safety with less complexity. Cooperation might take place by use of negotiated rulemaking.