CEI General Counsel Sam Kazman about to take a spin in Google's self-driving car. (Photo by Marc Scribner) CEI General Counsel Sam Kazman about to take a spin in Google's self-driving car. (Photo by Marc Scribner)

For the past several years, I've been writing about highly automated vehicles -- widely referred to as driverless cars -- and the huge potential they have in reducing injuries and deaths (over 30,000 Americans die on the roads every year), improving mobility for the disabled and elderly, reducing the drudgery of commuting, and helping the environment... provided policy makers don't mess it up with onerous laws and regulations (see here, here , and here ). Recently, I appeared on Fox Business Network's libertarian news-talk program The Independents to discuss automated vehicle developments, both technological and political. You can watch it here Today, CEI released a white paper I've authored, " Self-Driving Regulation: Pro-Market Policies Key to Automated Vehicle Innovation ," that goes into much more detail in arguing for regulatory restraint in order to allow the eventual consumer roll out to occur as timely and as cost-effectively as possible. In it, I provide a brief historical overview of automated vehicle development, explain current developments in the legislative and safety regulatory spaces, and offer a number of recommendations to policy makers. So, why should you care about automated vehicle regulation? The short answer: bad regulation has the potential to kill. One of the biggest risks is getting the rules wrong and unnecessarily delaying consumer availability and/or increasing the prices faced by consumers. If automated vehicles are indeed safer than current manually driven vehicles, any delay or price increase means consumers will be stuck driving more dangerous vehicles. The stage is set for a classic "Death by Regulation" event: well-meaning lawmakers and bureaucrats deny safer products to consumers out of an overabundance of caution, translating to increased injuries and deaths. That is why it is so important for regulators not to mess it up. Even if you aren't sympathetic to free markets and libertarianism, I suspect there the first two-thirds will be of interest. Read the full thing here