ATLANTA — You have probably seen them before, driverless vehicles crisscrossing Atlanta’s biggest city.
The cars normally have no issues, but multiple times, social media has been abuzz with malfunctioning Waymos stuck in the middle of an intersection and creating a traffic nuisance.
If a human were behind the wheel, the driver would likely get a citation and potentially a fine or points on their license.
However, if the car is driverless, there is likely no punishment.
According to the Atlanta Police Standard Operating Procedure, they are told not to issue citations to driverless vehicles.
The standards read in part:
“The court system is currently unable to process traffic citations for AVs with no human operator. If the vehicle violates a traffic law, where a citation would be warranted, the officer must write a report providing the details surrounding the incident and the law that was violated.”
“So it looks like there are two sets of rules out there -- one for people and the other for robots,” Chris Timmons, a partner with the law firm Knowels Gallant and Timmons, said.
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Timmons said many of our laws are focused on penalizing a “driver,” and in driverless vehicles, there is a gap of responsibility.
“And so if there’s no driver, there’s nowhere to cite,” Timmons said.
Timmons said Waymos can still be liable in civil court, and if a driver with Waymo is in the front seat, the operator can still be cited.
“It’s just a matter of figuring out, you know, it’s an extra step of figuring out who at the company needs to be ultimately responding to these actions,” Timmons said.
“I would say this is very much the beginning when it comes to the intersection of technology and law,” Emory Professor Ramnath Chellappa said.
Chellapa said that as technology continues to develop, more adjustments to the law will be needed.
He said courts are already having to deal with the legal limits of AI and how it impacts intellectual property.
“I think the legal framework is always going to be behind technology,” Chellappa said.
Now, these incidents with Waymo are rare. According to Atlanta police, there have been fewer than a dozen cases so far.
However, until the law catches up, driverless cars will have a leg up on the rules of the road.
“I can’t believe we’ve reached the stage where our judicial system treats machines better than us,” Chellappa said. that
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