Document Type

Article

Journal Title

Villanova Law Review

Volume

70

First Page

115

Publication Date

4-2025

Abstract

Hundreds of thousands of automated vehicles (AVs) are currently driving on America’s roads. The defining feature of AVs is that sophisticated technological systems control some or even all aspects of vehicle movement. Like any motor vehicle, AVs provide many benefits but also raise significant safety concerns. Indeed, people are already dying in collisions with AVs. Effective AV regulation is therefore critical.

This Article addresses an important—perhaps the most important— issue of AV regulation today. Recent empirical research has uncovered a shocking legal crisis: more than 40,000 conventional state laws are unclear or ineffective when applied to AVs. Fortunately, the vast majority of these problematic laws can be fixed through a single change: updating the definition of “driver” to account for AVs. Indeed, a new definition would likely remedy more than 30,000 of these problematic laws.

This Article accordingly addresses this pivotal issue by developing a new statutory definition of “driver” for AVs. To do so, this Article evaluates all of the reforms that states have adopted thus far regarding the meaning of “driver,” and concludes that all of these new definitions are fatally flawed. This Article therefore recommends a new two-fold definition of “driver” for AVs. First, a human should be the driver of an AV if and only if that human reasonably expects he or she must actively supervise the operation of the vehicle. Second, when there is no traditional human driver, the identity of the nontraditional driver should be determined based on a declaration system under which companies identify themselves as responsible for the operation of AVs.

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