Regulating Road Vehicle Teleoperation: Back to the Near Future

Due to the many remaining obstacles before reliability and safety can sufficiently be guaranteed for high-level automated vehicles (AVs), teleoperation or remote operation of partially automated vehicles by a human driver has become increasingly interesting to consider. However, remote operation, including remote driving, has so far only received little attention in legal scientific and transportation literature. This paper aims to establish some basic legal matters for remote driving by examining its regulatory development in three different jurisdictions. A combination of methods is employed including an examination of literature regarding AVs and their regulation. The main result is that current regulation in the examined jurisdictions intentionally addresses a future with high-level AVs, but to a large extent excludes regulatory details for remote operation. In conclusion, this paper argues that both present and coming regulation for automated vehicles ought to be more near future-oriented and address the concept of remote operation more explicitly. This, for regulation to be better in touch with current technology, for the benefit of a wider acceptance in society, for legal certainty, but also for innovation support and stability for investments in technology.