Andrew R. Gillin Automobile Accidents Law Blog on Lawyers.com

Back in June of 2011, Nevada passed the first driverless car legislation in America. The legislation was backed by Google, which is testing it's driverless vehicles in Nevada and needed the laws in place to continue doing so.

The law was introduced in March 2011 as bill AB511 and defines an autonomous vehicle "to mean a motor vehicle that uses artificial intelligence, sensors, and global positioning system coordinates to drive itself with the active intervention of a human operator."

The legislation itself doesn't do too much more than simply put the Nevada Department of Transportation in charge of setting safety standards and designating areas where the technology can be tested. However, that we are even dealing with hard legislation at all should be a signal to all Americans, and especially those in the legal community, that it's time to start planning for the future of automated cars.

One thing that I wonder about when it comes to this technology is not simply legislating how they can be used. One assumes that there will be special lanes at first, and testing areas for people to gain comfort with the technology. 

However, what about the criminal element here? To what degree will people be responsible for the actions of automated cars, if the reason they are automated in the first place is to allow humans to do other things besides pay attention to the roads.

Looking even further, I wonder about how driverless cars can be put to ill-use by people seeking to use them as implements of terror or destruction. It strikes me that we are unequipped to handle the massive changes in legislation that may be needed in the not-so-distant future.

One likely route for all this to happen is for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to simply step in and, as they have with safety measures in the past, require that all vehicles be designed in a certain way that conforms to best safety practices.

Whatever the method, it's interesting that a couple more states, including Florida, plan to adopt new legislation regarding automated cars. The future is now, and it's time for the legal community to start having conversations about how the law will reflect the world of automated cars.