Soble, Overly Discuss Safety, Regulatory Concerns over Self-Driving Cars

Partners Jeff Soble and Mike Overly were quoted in a Law360 article, “Autonomous Car, Drone Cos. Navigate New Compliance Risks,” about the still-evolving safety and regulatory concerns posed by new technologies in the transportation sector.

Soble said the first question auto manufacturers, technology giants, artificial intelligence developers and other companies in the autonomous car space should be asking themselves is, “What regulations do I need to comply with?” “What’s my capital investment to comply with them, and what’s my return on my capital investment, considering that I don’t know two years from now, or a year from now, whether those will change or [whether] there’s any consistency?” he said.

Given how quickly self-driving cars are being designed and developed, Overly said, cybersecurity and privacy will be key areas that regulators will focus their rulemaking efforts on in the future. “It would not surprise me if we start to see the federal government move away from voluntary [guidance] to ‘we need something more uniform here’ across the nation so we don’t have this sort of patchwork approach,” he said.