Is Volvo correct?

Not exactly breaking news that Volvo came out recently with a call for the US to regulate and test driverless vehicles. A slew of articles on this.

Volvo is Swedish, with a Scandanavian, rational outlook that differs a bit - maybe more than a bit - from how Americans perceive the role and timing of regulating new industries and technologies. Oh, and right now the US is pretty split in what the role of government is vis a vis the private sector. 

Think patchwork or junk pile

Our funny federal/state/local system is also in full force when it comes to roadway and vehicular regulation and funding. Traditionally, US regulation of roadways is a hodgepodge of federal, state, county, and city rules, depending on the topic, the level of federal regulation, and the jurisdiction that controls the road. To make matters more complicated, some aspects of road use, sometimes including speed, safety belts, and federal motor carrier rules, are not so much regulated as involving legal bribery - as in you get the funds if you do things the feds' way, such as regulate a particular way with a certain speed limit, or require seat belts. 

This is not a rational system, but rather a patchwork quilt, to put it nicely, or rather a junk pile, to put it not so nicely, of historical regulation of each aspect of roadway funding and regulation, including vehicles of various types. No one would start over, in my opinion, and design the system that we have.

Just one example would be the different designations of roads that can be city, county, or federal routes. In my own state, it is near impossible for locals to even get a traffic signal on a state road, which basically means any main thoroughfare, some of which are two-lane roads. One must go through the state, which can be a Kafkaesque years-long exercise.

Back to the main topic - driverless regulation

So what to think of the Volvo perspective? Sometimes, what the US does best is sit back, watch the private sector - in this case a combination of tech companies, car manufacturers, app developers, the insurance industry, and others - create and permit the states to be, in the famous phrase of Justice Brandeis, laboratories of innovation. Out of the hodgepodge can come a competition of ideas.

Yes, and what about smooth travel, consistent rules, and international and interstate commerce? I guarantee that something as ubiquitous as driverless vehicles will be will soon result in either federal legislation or interstate compacts or our current, functional, hodgepodge that manages to work.

The aspects of the regulatory and land use scheme for driverless to watch out for, from my perspective, will be whether we encourage shared-use and transit over single occupancy vehicles, whether we continue to discriminate against pedestrians, especially, and people with disabilities, in particular, and whether the aging baby boomers will advocate to insist on driverless just in time for their decrease in and cessation of driving.