UN regulations for autonomous vehicles are developing rapidly

Fully autonomous cars are still years away, but the UN is working on internationally agreed rules that would see “globally harmonized rules for automated driving systems ready by mid-2026.”

The UN World Forum on Harmonisation of Vehicle Regulations is a working group of the Inland Transport Committee of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) that shapes the legal framework for inland waterway transport.

The Forum consists of six permanent working groups, each with its own specialization, one of which is the Working Group on Automated/Autonomous and Connected Vehicles (GRVA).

UNECE held a press conference yesterday with speakers from GRVA who presented international developments in the regulation of autonomous vehicles.

Dmitry Mariyasin, deputy executive secretary of UNECE, opened the press conference by saying that for safety reasons it is difficult to move quickly in autonomous vehicles.

“We need to have all the pieces of regulation in place before autonomous vehicles can safely drive on the streets. It’s not about technical feasibility – it’s about safety,” Mariyasin said. “We now feel that while the hype around this is fading, the real serious work on regulation is progressing.”

Richard Damm, Chairman of GRVA, then talked about how GRVA has now adopted guidelines for automated driving systems, which is an important step. Regulatory work in this area “is progressing at a rapid pace and we plan to have a globally harmonized regulation on automated driving systems ready by mid-2026.”

He went on to say that new UN regulations on driver assistance systems were adopted in February 2024 and will enter into force in September 2024. “This is also an important step because assistive technology will open the way to automation.”

François Guichard, secretary of GRVA, said that unlike some fields where regulations appear long after a new technology is introduced, GRVA focuses on establishing the rules first, which is very important for this industry because “regulations are the enabler “.

He went on to say that regulations for electric vehicles were also ready before they hit the market, and there is now a regulatory framework in place for hydrogen vehicles as well, should they go into mass production.

Of the five levels of automation, he said the first two are common and involve technology used in almost all mass-produced cars.

Level 3 – when the driver is not driving while the automated systems are on, but can step in at any time and must take over at the request of the system – is very rare. Level 4 is not available for sale as a mass product. At this level, the driver does not have to be ready to intervene quickly. Level 5 vehicles are fully autonomous.

“Is there a future for autonomous cars? “I can clearly answer ‘yes’ to that question,” Damm said.

“This technology will come and some of it is on the way, even if it doesn’t yet penetrate the mass market. It will be a few more years before we see this in the mass market as we need to work out a few issues.