Law and Tech Collide: Foreseeability, Reasonableness and Advanced Driver Assistance Systems

Recently, many scholars have explored the legal challenges likely to be posed by introduction of automated and autonomous vehicles. Minimal attention has focused on the legal implications of advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) in vehicles already currently available. These can warn of external dangers, monitor driver behavior and control how a vehicle brakes, accelerates, maintains speed or position on the road. The dynamic driving task is no longer reliant simply on the physical interaction of human driver with that vehicle. Instead, the vehicle may act apart from human direction as it senses other objects in the immediate environment or monitors the human driver’s behavior or biometrics. These technological tools, which reduce the opportunity for human error, can be described as augmenting human driving capacity. Increases in safety promised by ADAS, arguably already evidenced by data, may require a reassessment of the risks posed by ‘un-augmented’ human drivers, what is now foreseeable given the data generated by ADAS and wearable driver-monitoring technology, and whether ‘un-augmented’ driving is any longer a reasonable response to that risk.