Can Driverless Go on Roads Without New Laws?

A piece in the New York Times offers the argument that the partially driverless vehicles coming on the market and the entirely driverless ones to follow will need no new laws to operate on our streets and highways. But an equally valid argument can be made that the legal presumption has always been - and these laws always assumed - human drivers would be operating the vehicles. It could be that state judiciaries, regulators, and legislatures will come to a range of conclusions about what the current laws mean in relation to driverless vehicles.

Another point made, a good one, is that the federal government has heretofore restricted itself to vehicle safety standards and the states have regulated driver licensing and behavior.

Questions and possible legal solutions

The question is raised, therefore, of what happens when the machine is both the equipment and the driver. This only leads to more questions. Are new laws required? Is that the province of the states or of the federal government? If we want people to be able to seamlessly travel and cross state lines, then hands-free "driving" cannot be subject to differing sets of rules when borders are crossed. In fact, presently, we not only have state regulations, but motor vehicle codes and enforcement performed at the city and county levels as well.

The possible savior here is the US Constitution's Commerce Clause, which will allow Congress to step in, as it has in the past, to declare that the nation needs a uniform set of rules and to specify what those rules are. Another option would be to create a uniform code among the states, similar to the Uniform Commercial Code and a range of others, that would amount to essentially the same (or extremely similar) laws being passed in most or all of the states in the continental US.