As regulators grapple with autonomous technology, conflicts between country-specific laws could impede the adoption of this technology. The United Nations has a forum (“WP29“) which aims to avoid such problems by harmonizing vehicle regulations. Many aspects of technical regulations for wheeled vehicles are discussed in a broad range of (informal) working groups. Because of the rapid progress of autonomous technology, the informal working group on Intelligent Transport Systems has recently been renamed and refocused as informal working group on ITS/Automated Driving.

The participants are now laying the ground work for future regulations. They have discussed various approaches to frame levels of autonomy and seem to be leaning toward SAE’s 6 levels of automated driving. Unfortunately, this framework is not very useful because most of the interest lies in just 2 of the six levels, because it can be misinterpreted as conveying a linear progression of technology from level to level and because it is based on a limited, somewhat mechanistic perspective but fails to see the full complexity of the software-based self-driving vehicle and the complexity of the context in which it operates, which it interacts with and constantly learns about.

Fortunately, the group decided against addressing highly automated first and fully automated driving only beginning in 2016 (see annotated working group document). Both topics will now be considered somewhat in parallel, although the group still leans more toward highly automated driving. One of their future discussion items will be usage scenarios for highly automated driving. Maybe they will also consider some scenarios for fully automated driving and then begin to understand the extent to which mobility and with it the role of passenger vehicles will change.

An excellent source for information about this process is GlobalAutoReqs.com, which maintains an up-to date list of cross-referenced documents related WP9.