Autonomous vehicles (AVs) are becoming an increasingly popular mode of transport, and their legislation have to quickly evolve to accommodate this rising movement. As autonomous vehicles become more prevalent, it's important for legislators to keep up with the latest developments in order to create smart policies that will benefit their constituents. Many questions still need to be answered about how best to integrate self-driving cars into our transportation systems, but one thing is clear: autonomous vehicles have the potential to make our cities much smarter and more sustainable and efficient. While there is no one-size-fits-all answer, it's important to consider how autonomous vehicles will fit into each country’s smart city initiatives.

Associate Professor Chen Siyuan at the SMU Yong Pung How School of Law, and Lead for AI in Specific Industries (Autonomous Vehicles) at SMU Centre for AI and Data Governance, believes it to be a matter of time before Autonomous Vehicles (AV) technology or driverless cars will be rolled out in Singapore.

Autonomous vehicles is one of the main initiatives of Smart Nation Singapore — a vision for a digital-first Singapore that builds long-term capabilities for the public sector, and promotes adoption and participation from the public and industry. Around 2015, AV public route testing had already been underway, shares Assoc Prof Chen at Expo 2020, held in November 2021. As part of the Singapore Business Series held in the Singapore Pavilion, Assoc Prof Chen was invited to present insights into the legislation of AVs in smart cities, in a discussion on Smart City Living.

That also coincided with a test flight by Singapore Post to fly a drone from one island to Singapore, and the deployment of driverless trucks in Jurong Island — a part of Singapore where oil refineries are located. Driverless shuttles have also been deployed in certain university campuses since 2019; and at Gardens by the Bay, a key tourist attraction in Singapore, the deployment of driverless shuttles has existed since 2019. Furthermore, autonomous buses in the towns of Ponggol and Tengah — fairly new towns in Singapore that are not as crowded as some of the more mature estates, and expected to be deployed in the near future.

“The  current state of autonomous vehicle deployment in Singapore is considered at the juncture between testbed — where you try to deploy the technology in highly controlled environments such as fixed routes, enclosed spaces — and town deployment, where we are expected to be soon,” adds Assoc Prof Chen.

“The third and final phase is, of course, an island wide deployment for the autonomous vehicles, particularly for the new towns which are meant to incorporate a lot of smart technology as well.”

The benefits of deploying AVs are clear as driver assisting technologies have the potential to reduce the incidence of accidents, optimise road space, and even lead to the creation of new jobs. Singapore was also ranked top in a 2020 KPMG AV Readiness Index, which ranked the preparedness of 30 countries and jurisdictions in the race for autonomous vehicles. 

And as it appears to be a matter of time before widespread AV technology is going to be integrated around the world, Assoc Prof Chen raises concerns regarding regulations: “Are there certain fundamental differences between how normal vehicles are operated by humans versus potentially fully autonomous vehicles? Can the regulation keep up or do we have to fundamentally change the regulations?”

In Singapore, baby steps were taken in early 2017 when the principal legislation in the form of the Road Traffic Act was amended, and subsidiary legislation was also introduced in 2020s. Legislation during that time mainly pertained to the testing of AV technology within fixed routes in enclosed spaces. Issues like the storing of data and mandatory insurance would all be catered for because those were highly controlled environments.

Just last year, the Law Reform Committee — of which Assoc Prof Chen is  a member, produced a report on how to potentially regulate civil liability with respect to AV technology.

“No firm conclusions can be drawn yet but definitely pointing more towards the direction of a need to really re-examine our existing laws,” he notes.

“This is not a problem that is unique to Singapore, managing restrictions around the world, the EU or Australia or UK and even the US. This is something that they've been thinking about. And different systems have different rules, different existing route traffic groups, and the consensus seems to be that the rules probably need to be changed. It's not as simple as just tweaking around the edges and hoping that everything will take care of itself.”

Why the existing legal frameworks may be inadequate

According to Assoc Prof Chen, AVs can be split into different levels of autonomy: On one end is the vehicle that does not require human control and is operated via hardware such as the sensors, as well as software to navigate and recognise images. AVs are also likely to be deployed in fleets particularly for public transport, as opposed to being owned by private individuals.

This is in contrast to current regulations that oversee vehicles driven by a human driver, which stipulates that the driver must not drive negligently or be subject to potential criminal laws; or defects in the vehicles that can be identified. In the case of AVs, there may be times that defects cannot be easily elucidated such as data management and other issues that may require forensic analysis of the technology. In the US, where there have been crashes involving Uber and Tesla autonomous vehicles, the process of determining what went wrong in the midst of litigation is drawn-out and complex. 

“With AVs, it's unclear who might owe the duty of care — is it the seller of the vehicle, the manufacturer of the different parts of the vehicle, the operator, or the third party provider services?” asks Assoc Prof Chen.

“This is because self-driving technology is likely to rely on a lot of data, and a certain connectivity about the data, and communicating with other entities.”

Other issues that arise with AVs will be that of contributory negligence, in cases whereby an accident is the fault of the pedestrian as opposed to the driver — when the vehicle is driverless; or how experts can assess the appropriate standard of care of an AV, which has more components from software to hardware that have to be maintained.

The issue of product liability is also complicated by AV mechanisms, and could range from the machine interpreted data, the programmers of software that lies within the machine. On the other hand, hardware such as the sensor, image capture or radars are probably easier to prove in the court of law.

“I think that the knot really lies in the software, the algorithms and the sort of data that has been fed,” shares Assoc Prof Chen.

“If we shift instead to strict liability, compensation will always arise as a matter of course that might be seen as too extreme, right? Generally in law, strict liability is seen as the last resort. And this might then prevent manufacturers from wanting to deploy in countries such as Singapore.”

Currently, the onus of proving of fault tends to be on entities with greater resources such as AV manufacturers or insurance companies, as adopted by the legislation in the UK. Assoc Prof Chen  reckons that insurers will be a big stakeholder in the conversation around AV legislation to determine how to calculate the risk with AV exposure. Overly stringent measures will  slow down the progress made by manufacturers and stifle innovation, which in turn will affect the rise of a thriving AV sector.

“At the end of the day, perhaps to break that deadlock, we have to consider what the priority is,” states Assoc Prof Chen.

“If it is to protect consumers and facilitate compensation, then a no-fault liability regime might work.”

Autonomous vehicles are a sustainable solution for smart city living and many cities around the world are already adopting them as part of their public transportation systems. However, current legislative frameworks may not be sufficient for regulating issues that might arise with AVs on our roads in the near future. As more countries adopt autonomous vehicles, policymakers and stakeholders will need to align their priorities to find ways to balance the protection of consumers without stifling innovation.