Report: State Laws Need Changing to Support Platooning, AVs

FleetOwner discusses automated vehicle platooning with Marc Scribner, author of Authorizing Automated Vehicle Platooning: A Guide for State Legislators, 2017 Edition.

Among the hurdles facing the wider deployment of autonomous vehicles (AVs) as well as efforts to develop platooning strategies for cars and commercial trucks alike are what’s being called “outdated state laws,” according to a new report compiled by the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) – laws that, in particular, forbid vehicles from following to close to one another.

“Right now such ‘tailgating laws,’ while they were entirely reasonable at the time they were passed, are a direct impediment to platooning and deploying self-driving vehicles,” Marc Scribner, a CEI senior fellow, explained to Fleet Owner.

Scribner also authored the group’s new report, Authorizing Automated Vehicle Platooning: A Guide for State Legislators, 2017 Edition, to provide state legislatures with guidance on how to amend their driving laws in order to allow for platooning and AV operations.

The CEI report is a nationwide inventory of state “following too closely” rules that offers specific, state-by-state fixes to amend statutes in a way that exempts computer-coordinated vehicle platooning from those laws.

Read the full article at FleetOwner.