The New York Times recently published this piece on Google cars that drive themselves. And we’re not just talking about steering a straight line down the interstate. One car even navigated the hairpin turns on San Francisco’s famously curvy Lombard Street. The cars use navigation systems and software capable of sensing nearby objects and reacting to their presence. Google cars reportedly have driven 1,000 miles without human intervention and more than 140,000 miles with “only occasional human control.” The Times notes that autonomous vehicles create “thorny legal issues” since the laws governing motor vehicles generally pin responsibility for their safe and lawful operation upon the driver--not the vehicle. Apparently the presence in the Google cars of a driver capable of overriding any error avoids any problem with California law. The operation of an autonomous vehicle without a human driver apparently would violate North Carolina law as well. G.S. 20-163 prohibits a person driving or in charge of a motor vehicle from leaving it “stand[ing} unattended” on a public highway or public vehicular area without first stopping the engine, setting the brake, and, upon a grade, turning the front wheels to the curb or side of the highway. Violation of this provision is negligence per se. Watts v. Watts, 252 N.C. 352 (1960). North Carolina law considers driving to be an exclusively human act, though not one that requires that a vehicle be in motion. The term driver is defined in G.S. 20-4.01(7) as being synonymous with the term “operator,” defined in [...]
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