The Lexing® network informs you

With this issue of our newsletter, we hit the road for a tour of  Smart Car laws around the world.

The first autonomous cars appeared on the roads of Nevada in the USA in 2012. Five years later, twenty-one American states and the District of Columbia have passed legislation related to autonomous vehicles, just like Sweden, Germany, Belgium, France, England, Singapore and Japan.

Meanwhile, at the level of international law, the Vienna Convention on Road Traffic of 8 November 1968 was amended by the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe on 23 March 2016 in order to explicitly allow in traffic autonomous vehicles provided that the self-driving technologies “are in conformity with the United Nations vehicle regulations or can be overridden or switched off by the driver”.

The regulatory barriers are removed gradually; however, there is still a long way to go until the commercialization of driverless cars, even if, according to optimistic forecasts, the number of autonomous cars sold is estimated to reach nearly 21 million by 2035.

The Lexing® network members provide a snapshot of the current state of play worldwide.

The following countries have contributed to this issue: Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, India, Mexico, Portugal, South Africa, Russia.

Lexing International Newsletter n°17 November 2017