Nynke Vellinga
Nynke Vellinga is a postdoctoral researcher at the STeP research group of the Faculty of Law of the University of Groningen, The Netherlands. Back in 2020, Nynke successfully defended her PhD thesis, titled ‘Legal Aspects of Automated Driving. On Drivers, Producers, and Public Authorities’, at the same university. Currently, Nynke is a member of the ITU focus group on AI for autonomous and assisted driving. The legal framework for cybersecurity in automated vehicles (as part of the Cybersecurity Noord-Nederland project) is one of Nynke’s main research focuses.
Title
Trial and error: the legal framework for the testing of automated vehicles
Abstract
The testing of vehicles of different levels of automation on public roads is a necessary step in the development of safe automated vehicles. Unfortunately, accidents have also shown that these trials are not without serious risks. A legal framework on the testing of automated vehicles can balance both the interest of the testing for the development of safe automated vehicles in the future and the interest of road safety in the present. Within Europe, different jurisdictions take different approaches regarding a legal framework for testing. In, for instance, the United Kingdom a soft law approach is taken, whereas elsewhere, for example in the Netherlands, a hard law approach prevails. This contribution aims to map out the differences and commonalities of the approaches taken by these and other jurisdictions towards the regulation of the testing of automated vehicles. In doing so, the consequences of the different approaches will be highlighted.