The global spread of autonomous transport testing has triggered the need to build an appropriate legal and regulatory landscape for the technologies of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR), legal and manufacturing experts said here on Tuesday.
Speaking at a media briefing ahead of the Global Manufacturing and Industrialization Summit to take place on March 27-30 in United Arab Emirates' (UAE) capital Abu Dhabi, William Reichert, partner of law firm K&L Gates in Dubai, mentioned legal gaps including ownership identification and accident liability once autonomous cars are put into use.
Badr Al-Olama, CEO of Strata Manufacturing, an advanced composite aerostructures manufacturing facility in Abu Dhabi, posed similar concerns, saying that a global consensus should be found and implemented.
He also said that shaping globally accepted rules about robotic cars goes hand in hand with cyber security and laws regulating information technology, as the software steering a car without a human driver can be vulnerable to hacker attacks.
The Vienna Convention on Road Traffic from 1968, which provides that every moving vehicle must have a driver, was amended in 2016 in order to permit the usage of autonomous cars.
However, the convention has been signed by 75 contracting countries only, said Claude-Etienne Armingaud, Paris partner at K&L Gates. One of the most notable absentees is the United States, he added.
The UAE is active in shaping laws regarding 4IR, said Al-Olama, adding that the Dubai government has set the target to transform 25 percent of total transport journeys to autonomous methods by 2030.
