Kevin Vosen will join Google to help the company navigate the muddy legal and regulatory waters surrounding the blossoming ‘driverless’ car industry, in which Google is angling to become a star player. A graduate of Harvard Law School and formerly chief legal officer at The Climate Corporation – a company which develops weather-monitoring applications for farmers – Mr Vosen is the project’s first ever head lawyer.
Degrees of automation
His appointment comes in the wake of what is widely believed to be the first ever US fatality involving a self-driving car, which has intensified the debate around safety, liability and regulation the industry. The Tesla-made vehicle involved in the crash is a semi-automated model which drove into another vehicle while in auto-pilot mode, killing driver-passenger Joshua Brown. Unlike the Tesla model, Google’s own self-driving car is fully automated with little room for human intervention – a distinction which is likely to fuel debate about which approach to driverless technology is safer.
Government consultation
Across the Atlantic, the UK government has this week launched its own public consultation on driver assistance and driverless car technologies. The consultation seeks to prepare British motorists, insurers, highway authorities and lawmakers for the arrival of fully-automated cars on British roads, so that the UK can ‘lead the way’ as the technology develops. Among its key questions are whether automated vehicles will push up insurance costs for motorists and whether driver alertness laws – such as those which prohibit the use of mobile phones while driving – could or should be adjusted for ‘passengers’ in automated vehicles.
Sources: BigLaw Business; The Inquirer; The Guardian
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