Reframing the governance of automotive automation: insights from UK stakeholder workshops

TLDR

Self‑driving cars represent a rapidly developing, heavily invested technology whose social complexity has received inadequate attention, underscoring the need to broaden the issues considered in governance. The study reports the first systematic UK stakeholder engagement process on self‑driving car governance. The authors organized workshop findings into a set of questions designed to inform the ongoing debate about self‑driving car governance. The authors conclude that the debate must be broadened to build trustworthiness and maximize public value, and that self‑driving cars call for a more active form of responsible‑innovation governance.

Abstract

How should policymakers engage with the possibilities of self-driving cars? Considering the major investment in systems involving self-driving cars and their speedy development, their social complexity has received inadequate attention. The anticipation necessary for good governance can be informed only in part by experiments such as testing self-driving cars on open roads, and there is a need to broaden the set of issues that are considered relevant. In this paper, we report on the first systematic UK process of engagement with stakeholders. We organise the findings of these workshops in terms of questions that might inform the ongoing debate about the governance of self-driving cars. Our conclusions are that this debate urgently needs to be broadened in order to build trustworthiness and maximise the public value of this emerging technology, and that the possibilities of self-driving cars suggest the need for a more active form of governance for responsible innovation.