Legal concerns related to the deployment of fully automated urban

CITIES DEMONSTRATING AUTOMATED ROAD PASSANGER TRANSPORT

SEVENTH FRAMEWORK PROGRAMME

THEME SST.2012.3.1-4.

AUTOMATED URBAN VEHICLES

COLLABORATIVE PROJECT – GRANT AGREEMENT N°: 314190

Deliverable number: D26.2

Delivery date (planned):

Delivery date (actual):

Author(s): Andras Csepinszky (1)

Co-authors: Michel Parent, Minna Honkanen, Sylvie Ponthus, Athanasiois Ballis, Cristina Villalón

Affiliations: 1. INRIA; 2. ERTICO; (3) CTL; (4) 2Getthere...

Page | 2 D26.2 Legal concerns, 1.0

Document control sheet

Title Legal concerns related to the deployment of fully automated urban vehicles

Creator Andras Csepinszky

Editor

Brief Description

This deliverable is a comprehensive compilation of the results of the consulta-tion based on questionnaires, phone interviews and physical meeting as well as the main legal issues to be solved before the automated urban vehicle can operate on the CityMobil2 demonstration sites.

Publisher

Contributors Michel Parent, Minna Honkanen, Sylvie Ponthus, Athanasiois Ballis, Cristina Villalón

Type (Deliverable/Milestone) Deliverable

Format

Creation date 11/09/2013

Version number Version 1.0

Version date 24/03/2014

Last modified by

Rights

Dissemination level

internal public restricted, access granted to: EU Commission

Action requested

to be revised by Partners involved in the preparation of the deliverable for approval of the WP Manager for approval of the Internal Reviewer (if required) for approval of the Project Co-ordinator

Deadline for approval

Version Date Modified by Comments

0.1 2013-09-13 Andras Csepinszky Initial structure of the deliverable

0.2 2013-09-27 Andras Csepinszky First draft

0.3 2013-10-03 Andras Csepinszky Further improvement after ERT review

0.4 2013-10-07 Andras Csepinszky Added contribution from Lausanne, CERN and San Sebastian.

0.5 2013-10-31 Andras Csepinszky Compillation of the contributions and finalization of the document for internal review

1.0 2014-03-24 Andras Csepinszky Implementation of theresult of the peer review


Table of Contents

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY ........................................................................................ 5

1. INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................. 6

2. METHODOLOGY ............................................................................................ 7

3. EXISTING LEGAL FRAMEWORK IN THE DIFFERENT COUNTRIES .........10

INTERNATIONAL LEGAL FRAMEWORK ...............................................................................10

Missing definitions in the International Conventions? ...............................................11

EUROPEAN LEGAL FRAMEWORK ......................................................................................12

NATIONAL LEGAL FRAMEWORKS......................................................................................15

Belgium ....................................................................................................................15

Finland .....................................................................................................................15

France......................................................................................................................17

Greece .....................................................................................................................19

Italy ..........................................................................................................................20

Spain .......................................................................................................................21

Switzerland ..............................................................................................................23

LOCAL LEGAL FRAMEWORK.............................................................................................24

4. OUTCOME OF THE INTERVIEWS ...............................................................26

LEGAL CONCERNS PROVIDED BY THE CITY AUTHORITIES ...................................................26

Definition of liability ..................................................................................................26

Contractual liability: ............................................................................................................. 27

Product Liability: .................................................................................................................. 27

Tort liability: ......................................................................................................................... 27

CONCERNS RELATED TO LIABILITY...................................................................................29

CONCERNS RELATED TO THE LACK OF SPECIFIC LEGAL FRAMEWORK .................................30

CONCERNS RELATED TO OTHER FACTORS .......................................................................31

OTHER INFORMATION PROVIDED BY THE CANDIDATE SITES ...............................................32

5. CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS ..............................................33

List of figures

FIGURE 1. STRUCTURE OF THE PROJECT ............................................................................. 7

FIGURE 2. PROCESS USED IN WP26 .................................................................................... 8

FIGURE 3. QUESTIONNAIRE USED FOR THE INTERVIEWS ........................................................ 8

FIGURE 4. PARTICIPATING CANDIDATE COUNTRIES................................................................ 9

FIGURE 5. EU LEGISLATION ................................................................................................14

FIGURE 6. AN EXAMPLE FOR AN AIRCRAFT SAFETY INSTRUCTION CARD .................................33

List of tables

TABLE 1. EC DIRECTIVES RELEVANCE TABLE ......................................................................13



Executive summary

This document shows the legal implications and background of the CityMobil2 demonstrations planned to be deployed in 6 different countries (Spain, France, Switzerland, Belgium, Italy and Greece). One of the most important task is to map the available legal framework in different levels: international, European, national and local/regional as they may impact the deployment of the demonstrations. In ad-dition to the identification of the available legal framework our goal was to identify what are the concerns and the position of the local authorities in the candidate cities regarding the project's goal.

There are three different possible way to proceed with a demonstrational de-ployment of automated urban vehicles. Froma generic point of view there are two in-ternational framework agreements, the Geneva Convention on Road Traffic (1949) and the Vienna Convention on Road Traffic (1968). Europe has an extensive set of Directives regulating the road traffic while on national level all countries provideits own version of Traffic Law, localized EN standards, etc.

One approach is to take the available legal environment and apply its rules to the planned demonstrations – in this case no specific ad-hoc measures will be needed but to comply with the law.

Another way is to develop a certification framework to ensure that the non-compatibility with the existing legal framework falls inside the requested safety and security standards. This will provide more specific development of risk assessment and risk mitigation but will lead to compliance with the compulsory traffic safety re-quirements.

The last option is that the demonstration goes far beyond the available legal framework – intentionally and because of the flexibility of the law. In this case the project will need to engage the available derogatory measures – exceptional autho-rization by different authorty instances (regional/cantonal or local). This involves the development of ad-hoc measures and will most probably involve efforts to create an safe certification framework and risk mitigation plan.

At the end of the day this document will provide a comprehensive list of the diffe-rent level of legal framework and develop set of recommendation/measures which will be the basis of the certification framework and other measures for the demons-trations.


1. Introduction

Automated vehicles and driver assistance systems are suffering a major draw-back in their way to large scale deployment: they are considered as liability-sensitive systems while in Europe there is a legal gap which results of incertainty among the manufacturers. There is no existing European legal framework specific for automated vehicles and the available international treaties (1949 Geneva Con-vention on Road Traffic and the 1968 Vienna Convention on Road Traffic) are im-plemented such a way that demonstrations and pilots are extremly difficult to carry out.

Therefore a suitable legal framework on automated road vehicles is one of the most important topic in the industry to allow large scale deployment of such trans-portation solutions. Previous projects such as Cybercars, Cybermove, CyberC3 and CityMobil have already shown that the technical background is already available.

CityMobil2 is targeting to deploy several longer term demonstrations of automat-ed urban vehicles in the candidate cities – in 6 different countries where no harmo-nized legal procedures available. The main task of D26.2 is to map the legal envi-ronment in these countries and to invite the participating cities'authorities to express their concerns related to the use of the vehicles on their public roads.

Listing these concerns and issues will help the project to identify and to develop the necessary measures to comply with the international, European, national and local legal measures and to proceed with the demonstration in due time.

The expected output of the deliverable will be recommendations for the project to propose appropriate measures in the target countries and to initiate the develop-ment of the Europeam Directive proposal being the end product of work package 26.


2. Methodology

To understand the concerns of the participating candidate city's authorities WP26 (see the position of the work package - marked with blue colour - in the pro-ject on Figure 1. developed a questionnaire (Figure 3.) covering the different as-pects of the deployment and operation related legal environment. It contained ques-tions about previous automated vehicles related experiences as well. The method-ology of WP26 is shown in the Figure 2. To understand the global approach of the exercise Figure 4. was added showing the participating countries. In this liast you have Finland, Belgium, France, Spain, Italy, Switzerland and Greece – with their particularities and special features in their national legal framework.

The answers were then acquired by phone interviews which facilitated the inter-action between the two parties giving enough flexibility to explain the scope and the role of the questionnaire.

Some of the authorities were not available during the avialble time-frame to set up the phone interview – they completed the questionnaire alone and sent back by e-mail.

In addition to the interviews the partners were requested to provide a short over-view of their national legal framework. This description was integrated into the doc-ument to highlight the different situations in the target countries and make the link between the expressed concerns and the available legal environment.

Figure 1. Structure of the project


Figure 3. Questionnaire used for the interviews

Figure 2. Process used in WP26


Figure 4. Participating candidate countries


3. Existing legal framework in the different countries

In the traffic industry there are existing in iternational and European treaties and directives already available. We used a top-bottom approach (International-European-national-local) to understand what are the implications of the existing le-gal environment on the feasibility of the planned demonstration.

International legal framework

The 1949 Geneva Convention on Road Traffic promotes road safety by estab-lishing uniform rules. These rules include article 8, which requires every vehicle or combination thereof to have a driver who is “at all times … able to control” it. The 1968 Vienna Convention on Road Traffic contains similar language that might be clarified by amendment. Article 8 of the Geneva Convention is probably satisfied if a human is able to intervene in operation of the vehicle and possibly satisfied if that vehicle operates within the bounds of human judgment. However, because the Convention is binding internationally and may be binding domestically, clarification of these issues is desirable.1

The Geneva Convention on Road Traffic is accepted by 95 states. The 1949 Convention's description of a Driving Permit and International Driving Permit are lo-cated in Annexes 9 and 10. Switzerland signed but did not ratify the Convention. There is a European Agreement supplementing the 1949 Convention on road traffic, in addition to the 1949 Protocol on road signs and signals, concluded in Geneva on 16 September 1950.2

The Convention on Road Traffic, commonly known as the Vienna Convention on Road Traffic, is an international treaty designed to facilitate international road traffic and to increase road safety by establishing standard traffic rules among the con-tracting parties. The convention was agreed upon at the United Nations Economic and Social Council's Conference on Road Traffic (7 October 1968 - 8 November 1968) and done in Vienna on 8 November 1968. It came into force on 21 May 1977. The convention has been ratified by 70 countries, but those who have not ratified the convention may still be parties to the 1949 Convention on Road Traffic. This conference also produced the Convention on Road Signs and Signals.3

In comparison to the Geneva Convention, the Vienna Convention imposes somewhat more extensive obligations on the driver of a vehicle. Article 8 reads as follows:

1. Every moving vehicle or combination of vehicles shall have a driver.

2. It is recommended that domestic legislation should provide that pack, draught or saddle animals, and, except in such special areas as may be marked at the entry, cattle, singly or in herds, or flocks, shall have a driver.

1 Bryant Walker Smith – Automated Vehicles Are Probably Legal in the United States

2 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geneva_Convention_on_Road_Traffic#The_1949_convention

3 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vienna_Convention_on_Road_Traffic


3. Every driver shall possess the necessary physical and mental ability and be in a fit physical and mental condition to drive.

4. Every driver of a power-driven vehicle shall possess the knowledge and skill necessary for driving the vehicle; however, this requirement shall not be a bar to driving practice by learner-drivers in conformity with domestic legislation.

5. Every driver shall at all times be able to control his vehicle or to guide his ani-mals.

A sixth paragraph on distracted driving was added to this article in 2006:

A driver of a vehicle shall at all times minimize any activity other than driving. Domestic legislation should lay down rules on the use of phones by drivers of vehi-cles. In any case, legislation shall prohibit the use by a driver of a motor vehicle or moped of a hand-held phone while the vehicle is in motion.4

Missing definitions in the International Conventions?

The most interesting aspect of the Conventions is the lack of definition of the dif-ferent actors of the road traffic such as the vehicole, the driver and the definition of a person. Since the days when the text of the Conventions was drafted the different definitions went through important change. From this perspective the interpretation of a driver can be the following as listed by the Free Dictionary5:

1. One that drives, as the operator of a motor vehicle.

2. A tool, such as a screwdriver or hammer, that is used for imparting forceful pressure on another object.

3. A machine part that transmits motion or power to another part.

4. A piece of software that enables a computer to communicate with a periph-eral device

This let some speculations to get into the conclusions that automated vehicles may not be against the international conventions if these definitions are interpreted on a flexible way.

The refered study from of Bryant Walker Smith may be a document to consider noting that the United States of America has not ratified the Vienna Convention on Road Traffic.

The scope of the work package 26 is reflecting this as well: a certification di-rective is planned on the legal basis we have in Europe and not a revision or amendment to the international conventions.

4 Bryant Walker Smith – Automated Vehicles Are Probably Legal in the United States

5 http://www.thefreedictionary.com/driver


European legal framework

In Europe several directives were issued which are regulating some of the tech-nical aspects of the planned demonstrations:

Directive 2002/58/EC on privacy and electronic communications6

Directive 2006/42/EC on machinery7

Directive 2007/46/EC establishing a framework for the approval of motor vehi-cles and their trailers, and of systems, components and separate technical units in-tended for such vehicles8

Directive 2008/57/EC on the interoperability of the rail system within the Com-munity9

Directive 2010/40/EU on the framework for the deployment of Intelligent Transport Systems in the field of road transport and for interfaces with other modes of transport10

In addition to the the EC Directives European regulation consists of European Standards (ENs) such as the EN ISO 13849. Concerning the available standards please refer to the deliverable D26.1 where an exhaustive list of relevant standards has been gathered. With the national adoption of the relevant European standards the national regulation is linked to the higher European level. The below table fighlights the relevance of the transportation and technology related EC Directives in the case of automated vehicles.

6 http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX:32002L0058:en:HTML

7 http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:2006:157:0024:0086:en:PDF

8 http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:2007:263:0001:0001:EN:PDF




Table 1. EC Directives relevance table

EC Directive Very relevant Relevant Not relevant Not rele-

vant at all

European Directive 70/156/EEC (road vehicles)

X

European Directive 95/16/EC of 29 June 1995 relating to lifts

X

Directive 2002/58/EC on privacy and electronic communications

X

Directive 2006/42/EC on machinery

X

Directive 2007/46/EC establishing a framework for the approval of motor vehicles

X

Directive 2008/57/EC on the interoper-ability of the rail

X

Directive 2010/40/EU on the framework for the deployment of Intelligent Transport Systems

X

The available EC Directives provide the legal framework while the standards provide the

technical rules which should be implemented during the production and the deployment of

the systems. As no automated road vehicle specific European regulation exist the project

partners are relying on the EC Directives related to transportation and consider the ap-

plicability and relevance of these documents. To facilitate this task the Table 1 maps the

relevance of the related EC Directives.


In the European legal framework a top-down approach is implemented. First of all the ratified international conventions are the utmost important legal documents. The European legislation provides then the EC Directives with the aim to harmonize the European legal environment. Additional elements are the regulatory European Standards (or ENs) which are then adopted by the different countries by their own national standardization bodies creating a local version of the given standard.

An excellent example is given in the Figure 5 where the ITS Directive and its regulatory implication is shown.

Figure 5. EU legislation


National legal frameworks

During the interviews with the city authorities it became obvious that we have to map the available legal framework of the different countries as it has a real influence how the project can deploy the demonstrations in the selected cities. Either the na-tional legal framework is flexible enough to allow automated road vehicles to be tested in an open environment or it is strictly following the international conventions such as the one of Vienna. Therefore we wanted to find out whether the national le-gal framework let us to implement the demonstrations with its original scope and without any limitation if the project provides global certification coverage of the sys-tem or it gives a way to proceed with derogatory measures for exeptions such as research or demonstrations. In the case if the national legal framework does not have any flexibility the system may be deployed only if it complies fully of the fore-mentioned existing legal environment (considering the vehicle as a railway with vir-tual rails).

In some cases the national legislations are dealing with the lack of definitions of important terms of the International conventions: in the case of France and Finland text is provided defining the driver, the vehicle and the public roads (See comment on the lack of definition in the section dealing with International legal framework).

Therefore the scope of the below sections is to introduce the legal environment of the different participating countries and understand what are the exceptions the project may follow to deploy the automated urban transport demonstrations.

Belgium

The legislation in Belgium is following the implementation of the Vienna Conven-tion concerning the legal responsibilities of the drivers. Concerning the type approv-al of the vehicles the national legislation is following the below European directives: Directive 2002/24/EC relating to the type-approval of two or three-wheel motor vehi-cles and repealing Council Directive 92/61/EEC, the Directive 2003/37/EC and the Directive 2007/46/EC on establishing a framework for the approval of motor vehicles and their trailers, and of systems, components and separate technical units intend-ed for such vehicles. These measures are in the authority of the Federal Ministry (Service Publique Federal) and no derogatory measures are available: a human driver must be all the time in control of the vehicle.11

Finland

The legislation related to the use of motorized vehicles in Finland consists of Road Traffic Act, Decree on the use of vehicles on the road and the Vehicles Act. In these regulations and rules, there are no mentions about vehicles without a driver; with automatic or remote control.

In all actions and decrees the driver is mentioned in different ways; driving the vehicle, driver’s responsibilities and obligations and also the different types of vehi-cle are defined by the numbers of seats addition to the driver. The Road Traffic act

11

The regional authority tried to contact several times the Federal Ministry but unfortunately no

answer received so far


also says that controlling the vehicle must be safe and the control devices shall be constructed and placed so that they are easy and safe to use while driving.

The Finnish road traffic laws define the requirements for different vehicles. Ac-cording to definition of a vehicle in Road Traffic Act (Tieliikennelaki 267/1981), vehi-cle means any device intended to move on the ground but not running on rails.

The definition of a vehicle in the Road Traffic Act and the Vehicles Act does not apply to all other vehicles used in rails, air, water or other element than land.

Power driven vehicle means any vehicle operated by power; motor vehicles comprise cars, mopeds and motorcycles, vehicles of category L falling outside these categories as well as tractors, public works vehicles and off-road vehicles.

Vehicles Act (1090/2002) applies to the traffic on roads. Road as a general ex-pression is a public or private road, street, square and snowmobile track, as well as other area intended for general traffic or generally used for traffic.

The act does not apply to vehicles which are solely used on building sites re-stricted from the general traffic or in factory, harbour, storage, racing or equivalent areas. However, some sections of the act e.g. concerning general safety require-ments, responsibility for the maintenance, registration and inspection of a vehicle, the imposition of a surveillance inspection, the obligation to repair a vehicle and the penalties apply to such vehicles too.

Type-approval means a procedure in which the approval authority certifies that a vehicle type, a system, a component or a separate technical unit meets the relevant technical requirements. Type approvals comprise EC type-approvals, E type-approvals, national type approvals and small-series type-approvals. Multi-stage type-approval means a procedure in which the approval authority alone or together with the approval authority of another EEA country certifies that an incomplete or complete vehicle type meets the relevant technical requirements, in accordance with the stage of production.

Vehicle manufactured a unique sample means a vehicle which is not manufac-tured in series production or a vehicle of category M1 which is converted from a ve-hicle of category N or modified as concerns the EC or E approved seating equip-ment. (575/2003)

According to the Finnish Vehicles Act, a motor vehicle to be used in traffic must be registered, and notification of any changes pertaining to the vehicle submitted to the register. The registration obligation does not apply to:

• any vehicles that are used solely at a construction site, factory, port, storage area, competition area or a similar area separate from public traffic

• any all-terrain vehicles except for snowmobiles

• any working machinery that is built or equipped for producing crops, harvesting or road maintenance, or any tractors meant to be controlled by a walking person or any similar working machinery

• any trailer meant to be towed by a category L vehicle, tractor, a working ma-chine or an ATV


• any towable equipment

• any sleighs.

Even if the registration of a vehicle is not mandatory, in some cases compulsory motor liability insurance may need to be taken out for the vehicle.

A vehicle shall be suitable for transport use, and its construction, equipment, maintenance and other characteristics shall be safe and in conformity with the rele-vant provisions. The construction, equipment and external shape shall not constitute any danger. A vehicle shall be easily controlled in usual driving situations. The con-trol devices shall be constructed and placed so that they are easy and safe to use while driving. The control devices, measuring instruments and signal lamps shall not deviate from the systems of other vehicles of the same category to an extent which would cause discomfort or danger. The Decree on the Vehicle Construction and Equipment also requires that e.g. the speedometer display is clearly legible to the driver.

France

The circulation of road vehicles on public grounds in France is regulated by the Code de la Route (traffic law), hereinafter CDR, which lays down a general legal framework for road mobility on public roads12. The CDR is defined at the national level by the Ministry of Transports and is often modified through “décrets”. Some of its aspects can also be modified at the local level by cities through “arrétés”. The CDR is meant to be compatible with the Vienna Convention on road traffic of 1968 (and modified several times after).

The first question to arise is the definition of “public roads”. The CDR identifies several types of public grounds, some of which are not allowed to motorized traffic: freeways, national roads, departmental roads, communal roads (which include city streets), bicycle lanes, pedestrian zones, dedicated bus or tram lanes, “zones 30” where the speed is limited to 30km/h, “zones de rencontre” where the speed of mo-torized vehicles is limited to 20km/h and pedestrians have the right of way.

The last 2 zones have appeared in France (after the Belgium example) in 2008 with a amendment to the CDR called “Code de la Rue” (décret 2008-754) and aims at giving priority to the most vulnerable road users and to encourage new ecological modes such as bicycles (unfortunately automated shuttles are not mentioned, but they would be in conflict with the Vienna convention). The implementation of such zones is under the responsibility of mayors.

Dedicated lanes (for buses, trams, taxis, cycles,…) are regulated by the CDR as long as they share some parts of the roads with other types of motor vehicles. They are exempted from it if they are totally segregated. Private zones open to the public are also regulated by the CDR.

In urban environments, it is the mayor who decides the classification of the roads. He/she can issue “arrétés” to modify some of the rules locally.

12

http://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/affichCode.do?cidTexte=LEGITEXT000006074228


The second question is the notion of road vehicles. A distinction is made be-tween non-motorized vehicles which are essentially cycles with 2 or 3 wheels and motor vehicles. Like in all European countries, motor vehicles must be homologated according to their size, weight, power, purpose (passenger, freight or special vehi-cle), loading capacity,… Trolley buses are included in this category but not trains or trams that have special regulations. Motor vehicles must have a certificate of “imma-triculation” with a licence plate. They are under the responsibility of a driver and must have an insurance.

The third question concerns the driver. The French CDR specifies explicitly (Décret n°2008-754 du 30 juillet 2008 - art. 15) that any moving vehicle (or set of moving vehicles) must have a driver. This driver must at any time be in position to execute easily and without delay any appropriate expected action. It is only implicit that the driver must be in the vehicle. The driver must also be a person with a driver license.

Therefore it can be stated that, in order to operate on public roads (if only to cross a public road), cybercars need modifications to the CDR. This can be done at the national level through a décret but will be difficult since it would be in contradic-tion with the current Vienna convention. The other, and simpler, alternative is to ask the mayor of a city to issue an arrêté to allow automated vehicles in particular zones of the city and to define the rules of operation of this service. This approach was used for the La Rochelle demonstration of CityMobil

The problem is different if we are not using (even partially) public roads. In this case, the CDR does not apply (nor the Vienna Convention) and we have more free-dom. In France it has been accepted to certify people movers according to the Ma-chinery Directive. The company Robosoft has used this approach for 2 systems in science parks.

Another approach is to consider the vehicles as guided vehicles and ask the STRMTG, a technical service of the Ministry of Transport, to issue an advice that can be used to get the final authorization from the local authorities (Préfecture). A meeting with the STRMTG was arranged on September 6, 2013 to discusse this approach for automated road transport systems (ARTS).

But it appeared that the process was not well adapted to the cybercars, mainly because this process require an approved road vehicle, but also a driver if the vehi-cle is operating on public roads.

The certification of a guided system (automated or not) is described in detail in the Décret 2003-425 for guided transports (the key element of a guided system is the ability to follow precisely a number of paths and can therefore be used by ARTS if we can prove that our vehicles follow a given number of paths and have an inde-pendent system to stop the vehicles if they leave their tracks. The precision is ex-pressed in the GLO (Gabarit Limite d’Obstacles) which is the envelope of all possi-ble movements of the vehicles. In the case of tramways, the GLO takes into account the size of the vehicle, the defect of suspensions, the defect of the railroad and the dynamics of the vehicles. No obstacle has to be in this envelope. The STRMTG also mentioned the necessity to address the “code de la route” if our vehicles are to use part of public roads (if only to cross a public road). In this case, it seems our vehi-cles cannot address this code since only tramways (mechanically guided) are ex-plicitly allowed to share the public roads. Public roads are also those in private sites open freely to the regular traffic (perhaps not true in the case of gated communities).


The compatibility of CTS with the Code de la Route has to be verified with DSCR who is charge of this Code de la Route. It should also be interesting to see if this is specific to the French code.

Besides, in the context of the European Project CATS, the Communauté Ur-baine de Strasbourg (CUS) and Induct organized a meeting on the 19th of Decem-ber 2013 with most of the different entities of the French “Ministère des Transports”, plus the DSCR entity of the “Ministère de l’Intérieur” (Délégation à la Sécurité et à la Circulation Routière). During this meeting, Induct obtained the formal authorization to perform demonstrations of such ARTS systems or vehicles on the French public roads (not segregated), by using the way of the “W certificats” rules described in the arrêté du 9 février 2009 (annex IX). In order to be fully in accordance with this arrêté, the ARTS use has to be limited to pre-identified users (called pioneer users in CATS project), and with an Induct’s operator always inside the vehicle. The ARTS involved is thus considered as a “tested equipment”, but not a public transport sys-tem.

Greece

In Greece whatever concerns the mobility of vehicles and pedestrians is defined in the National Road Traffic Regulation (Κώδικας Οδικής Κυκλοφορίας – Κ.Ο.Κ., Ν.2696/1999), which can be found in the following official reference on-line, pow-ered by the Ministry of Infrastructure, Transport and Networks13. In fact, this Regula-tion is a superset of Laws concerning Traffic in various perspectives.

KOK is applied on roads and spaces which are being used for the public trans-portation of vehicles, pedestrians and animals (Article 1).

The main vehicle categories regulated by KOK are motorized vehicles, motor vehicles, motor vehicles for public usage, motor vehicles for private usage, motor vehicles for transferring passengers, motorized buses, motorized trucks, trailers, light trailers, semitrailers, electrically powered buses (trolleys), towing vehicles, agri-cultural machinery, machine works vehicle, motorbike, motorcycle, bicycle, articu-lated vehicles, animal powered vehicles, cart vehicles, hand driven vehicles, three-wheeled vehicles, road vehicles (Article 2.1).

Each moving vehicle or combination of vehicles is mandatory to have a driver (Article 13.1).

In order for a motorized vehicle to circulate inside the country boundaries (…) is required the former approval of the vehicle’s type by the corresponding National Au-thority, (in this case) from the Ministry of Infrastructure, Transportation and Net-works for (…) the “rest vehicles” category (Article 84.1).

A common committee of 3-4 Ministries (…) is responsible to classify vehicles of special usage in a special classification, if their classification is not obvious in one of the previous (…) categories. The same decision defines the content of the special usage of those vehicles and all details according to the terms, conditions and the process of granting approval on those vehicles (Article 84.4).

13

www.yme.gr/getfile.php?id=5354


It is not considered legitimate for any motorized vehicle to circulate anywhere in-side the Country, unless it is taken inventory and classified according to vehicle classification (Article 87.1).

It is not considered legitimate for any motorized vehicle (…) to circulate any-where inside the Country, unless a circulation permit has been issued (Article 88.1).

It is not considered legitimate for any motorized vehicle (…) to circulate any-where inside the Country, unless it holds legitimately assigned traffic plates (Article 90.1).

Foreign automobiles are forbidden to enter and circulate inside the Country, un-less they carry the distinctive mark of the country they have been classified (Article 91.1).

The main conclusions from the above existing Greek legal framework is that all moving vehicles should have a driver (without though providing more details for how a ‘driver’ is defined in reality), the automobile/automated vehicle is neither predicted nor considered as a vehicle itself as it does not belong to any existing category in-side KOK and thus it is not able to be treated by the current ‘version’ of KOK so as to be registered and classified.

The insertion of a new type of traffic (automated) in the existing provisions of the Road Traffic Regulations (KOK) cannot be implemented at once on the scope of a pilot project as it concerns a limited and not generalized usage that poses more or less an experiment. According to the regulations, the vehicle should pass a stand-ardized process of vehicle registration and classification. At the moment there are no existing criteria/prerequisites for registering automated vehicles.

More general information about Road Traffic Security can be found on the webpage of the ministry: http://www.yme.gov.gr/?tid=122&aid=0 (Ν. 3897), while in-formation about Vehicle Specifications are listed at the following website: http://www.yme.gov.gr/?getwhat=1&oid=104&id=&tid=104.

Italy

The mobility of road vehicles in Italy is regulated by the Codice della Strada (code de la route, traffic law), hereinafter CDS, which lays down a general legal framework for road mobility. According to Art. 46, CDS is only applicable to “road vehicles of any kind driven by a human being”. The textual formulation of this rule leads us to a first consideration that has a major consequence on our project: in fact, it can be inferred that a vehicle must be driven by a human being, otherwise it cannot legally run in a public road. This is further confirmed by the rules applicable to civil liability: according to Art. 2054 of the Italian Civil Code, “a driver of a road vehicle is obliged to compensate for any damage to people or to things he/she may cause while driving”. The combined application of these rules leads us to affirm that, according to Italian traffic law, a vehicle must be driven by a human being who's re-sponsible for any damage caused by the vehicle itself. In addition, in Italy road vehi-cles must, in any case, be covered by an insurance in order to circumvent insolven-cy of drivers in case of damage. In light of these brief but meaningful considerations, we can safely assume that an automated transport system, such as CM1 and CM2, cannot be considered a road vehicle and be validly certified as such, at least as long as the legislation concerning road mobility remains unchanged.


This is probably the main reason for which the Italian Ministry for Infrastructures and Transport (the authority in charge of the certification of both road and railway transport systems, hereinafter MoT) has considered CM1 a vehicle running on rail tracks. Since it could not be considered a road vehicle, the only solution available was to consider the vehicle's trajectory as a virtual track. In this respect, it worth not-ing that railway systems of EU Member States have to comply with the technical specifications for interoperability as established by the European Railway Agency (ERA). The latter, in turn, works in close cooperation with the European Standardi-sation Organisations (ESO), whose main function is to prepare common standards of technical requirements. More specifically, the standard EN 50126 provides for a specific set of technical requirements of railway systems, its sub-title being “Railway applications – The specification and demonstration of Reliability, Availability, Main-tainability and Safety (RAMS)”. As a result, MoT has carried out the validation pro-cess of CM1, and will probably do the same with CM2 (see report of the meeting with the MoT, already delivered) applying EN 50126. It is needs to be noted noting that the latter was prepared by CENELEC (European Committee for Electrotech-nical Standardisation) under a mandate given by the European Commission and the European Free Trade Association. According to Directive 98/34/EC, when a Euro-pean Standardisation Organisation operates under the mandate given by the Com-mission, compliance with the standard so produced creates a presumptive conformi-ty with the relevant EU legislation (which is, in case of railway systems, Directive 2008/57/EC). To put it differently, if a railway system is produced in compliance with EN 50126, that system is presumed to be consistent with Directive 2008/57/EC, and therefore it can be automatically validated by national authorities. The problem of CityMobil is that obviously it is not a railway system proper, and as such it is not produced and implemented following EN 50126. As explained by MoT's engineers in our last meeting, the validation of CM1 had to follow, as a consequence, a step-by-step procedure, since the conformity of CM1 with EN 50126 could not be pre-sumed. In other words, MoT had to verify in practice CM1's observance of the RAMS process set forth by EN 50126.

Subsequently, as far as the Italian legal framework is concerned, it can be safely affirmed that Italian authorities at present do not ground their decision concerning innovative transport systems on a specific legal basis, since such legal basis has not yet come into existence. Technically speaking, this situation can de defined as a normative vacuum. In the present case, this vacuum is filled by means of an analog-ical application of EN 50126, namely a set of rules which was thought to be applied to a different set of facts (namely, railway transport). In legal parlance, this analogi-cal application to fill in a normative gap at the informal level can be called 'adminis-trative practice'. The lack of a specific legal basis has a major impact on the certifi-cation process, since it imposes on MoT the obligation to conduct a strict case-by-case observance of each single innovative transport system, and even of each sin-gle step of their practical implementation. Thus the need for a specific and clear le-gal framework.

Spain

According to the Vienna Convention on Road Traffic (Vienna, the 8th of Novem-ber, 1968) drivers shall always control the vehicles they drive and consequently they are fully responsible.

Article 8 of the Vienna Convention literally establishes that:


1. Every moving vehicle or combination of vehicles shall have a driver. 2. It is recommended that domestic legislation14 should provide that pack, draught

or saddle animals, and, except in such special areas as may be marked at the entry, cattle, singly or in herds, or flocks, shall have a driver.

3. Every driver shall possess the necessary physical and mental ability and be in a fit physical and mental condition to drive.

4. Every driver of a power-driven vehicle shall possess the knowledge and skill necessary for driving the vehicle; however, this requirement shall not be a bar to driving practice by learner-drivers in conformity with domestic legislation.

5. Every driver shall at all times be able to control his vehicle or to guide his ani-mals.

For the purpose of this Convention, article 1 showed some expressions, which

shall have the meanings thereby assigned to them, such as: ‘driver’, defined as any person who drives a motor vehicle or other vehicle (including a cycle), or who guides cattle, singly or in herds, or flocks, or draught, pack or saddle animals on a road.

This Convention entered into force the 21st of May 1977, almost nine years after the agreement. Spain signed the treaty but did not ratify it because, in accordance with article 54, Spain does not consider itself bound by article 52 and entered a res-ervation with respect to article 46 (Source: United Nations Treaty Collection, UNTC).

In any case, the Spanish Royal Decree 13/1992, of January 17, by which the ‘General Regulations of Circulation’ were passed, recognized in their General Provi-sions, that these regulations incorporated the rules of the Vienna Convention on Road Traffic.

Afterwards, this Royal Decree was repealed by the Spanish Royal Decree 1428/2003, of November 21, by which the ‘General Regulations of Circulation for the application and development of the articulated text of the Law15 on Traffic, Cir-culation of Motor Vehicles and Road Safety’, were passed.

Therefore, according to the provisions of article 8 of the Vienna Convention, in-corporated into the Spanish regulations, vehicles shall have a driver.

Article 25 of the Law 7/1985, of April 2, ‘Regulatory of the Basis of the Local Re-gime’ states that: the municipalities have the competency, always according to the national and regional legislations, to regulate the public urban transport. The re-gional Law 15/2002, of November 28, of Urban and Metropolitan Transport of Pas-sengers of Castilla and León recognizes the competencies of the municipalities to plan, order and manage their public urban transport.

Article 26 of the Law 7/1985, states that: in the municipalities with more than 50.000 citizens the urban transport is a compulsory service. This fact includes the processing of tickets, inspections, control and pricing.

14 The ‘domestic legislation’ of a Contracting Party means the entire body of national or local

laws and regulations in force in the territory of that Contracting Party.

15 Passed by Royal Legislative Decree 339/1990, of March 2.


Furthermore, the Royal Legislative Decree 2/200416, of March 5, by which the adapted text of the ‘Law Regulatory of the Local Finances’ is passed, recognizes the competencies of the municipalities. It states that: the General National Admin-istration shall grant credit to the companies operating urban transport, and also es-tablishes that: the budgetary credit shall favor the Local Governments, whatever the management forms of the local transport.

Article 137 of the Spanish Constitution of 1978, states that: the State is orga-nized territorially into municipalities, provinces and Autonomous Communities that may be constituted. All these bodies shall enjoy self-government for the manage-ment of their respective interests.

Switzerland

The circulation of road vehicles on public grounds in Switzerland is regulated by the Loi sur la circulation routière (traffic law), hereinafter LCR, which lays down a general legal framework for road mobility on public roads.

The LCR is defined at the national level by the parliament and the Federal Roads Office. We don’t know if it can be modified through “décrets” like in France. The LCR is written to be compatible with the Vienna convention on road traffic of 1968.

To speak about concrete things, we try to homologate our shuttle. We ap-proached the Federal Office of Transport and the Federal Office for Roads in No-vember 2012. We sent an email to present Citymobil2 project and our work at EPFL about Navia.

16

Modified by Royal Legislative Decree 9/2012, of May 25


Local legal framework

In Belgium there is no existing law at local level: the deployed system has to comply with the existing federal legal framework. In addition the system has to be approved and authorized by the owner of the land where its path is set.

In Finland there is no local law available today. All decision should be carried out according to the national legal framework implemented by the Ministry.

In France the department's prefect may give authorization after minutious safety and risk assessment of the system. Following the exceptional derogatory authorization of the prefect the city's mayor may sign an "arrété" allowing the opera-tion on a temporary basis. Such an action has to be considered as an ad-hoc de-rogatory measure for research or demonstrational purposes. The authorisation pro-cess for guided vehicles is to be followed for each implementation and is quite cost-ly in time and resources. The minimum time is about 15 months. The recommenda-tion of the STRMTG for our ARTS is therefore to try another approach through the homologation of a new class of vehicles or through local authorization. However, it is possible to authorize a CTS as a guided system if we accept some restrictions such as following defined trajectories and carrying a detailed safety analysis

In Greece municipalities are authorised to conduct such trials in cases they are conducted in a secure environment, the National Traffic Regulations are applied and of course a corresponding municipal decision grants this activity. Aa Municipal Board decision can define the route of the automated vehicles, which according to Road Traffic Regulation (KOK) should be isolated and guarded. The guarded route should be done so both by the Municipal Police and by the (Traffic) Police. As such, the route is defined for specific hours per day, while the vehicle to be used must be insured, in order to carry passengers (according to Κ.Ο.Κ.)

The Callicrates Law (Νόµος Καλλικράτη, Ν. 3852/201017) defines the responsi-bilities of the Local Authorities concerning traffic in the local level. More specifically, the Municipal Board is responsible for the development and redevelopment of the area (Article 83.2.c), the maintenance of public streets (…) and generally of all pub-lic spaces of the municipal region (Article 83.2.d), the circulation and transportation of the municipal region (Article 83.2.e). Moreover, the following responsibilities legit-imize Local Authorities to conduct surveys on the maintenance and upgrading of municipal road network (Article 94.2.15), to conduct traffic studies (…) (Article 94.2.16), to provide standards for the municipal bus stops (Article 94.2.23) and to forbid parking in specific places (Article 94.2.24).

In Italy the local authority does not have right to allow such an activity: the Italian Ministry of Transport may give ad-hoc authorization.

In Spain, the municipality is the authority, with competencies in road traffic en-forcement, but always according to the national and regional regulations. Thus, the municipality, in order to manage their interests and in the scope of its competencies, can promote all sort of activities and rend as many public services as necessary to satisfy the needs and aims of the community. The municipal bylaw able to affect the CityMobil2 project is mainly one; the Municipal Regulation of Traffic and Road Security in the City of León.

17

http://www.ypes.gr/UserFiles/f0ff9297-f516-40ff-a70e-eca84e2ec9b9/nomos_kallikrati_9_6_2010.pdf


In Switzerland the Federal Roads Office and the Federal Office of Roads may grant a temporary authorization for using Navia on the EPFL campus. In addition to the federal level the authority of the Canton of Vaud requests a series of tests after which they may grant an "accreditation" to the tested vehicle.

To summarize the situation of the different demonstration sites it seems that there are two major opportunity: either they request full compliance to the national legal framework which implement the ratified international/European laws on road traffic or with some measures (certification or derogatory) they will allow the demon-strations with a limited scope (no public intersection e.g.). It is important to note that in most of the cases in the local level there are only the necessary legal tools to act following the derogatory measures.

In Switzerland the federal authorities are in charge. No local measures have been reported.


4. Outcome of the interviews

The first question of the questionnaire was focusing to investigate whether a national legal framework exists specifically for automated road vehicles and not surprisingly the answer was negative from all of the partners. Some of them mentioned that there are some measures available to investigate if they can allow the demonstration without major efforts – using existing derogatory measures.

The second question tried to identify whether the current framework's rules may be adapted to make the system deployed. In some countries it is pos-sible where the legal framework is flexible enough (Finland), in other countries de-rogatory measures may be considered to have temporary authorization (France, Greece, Switzerland) and in some countries the system can be tested only if it im-plements the strict legal conditions (eg. run as a tram on virtual rails in a completely separated environment).

In the case of CERN the situation is even more special as the demonstration is planned to be deployed in the its own area where the direction of CERN has full au-thority on trafficThe General Director may give authorization through operational cir-cular to the deployment and the operation of ARTS.

The next item to investigate was to identify whether on local level there are legal tools available and the local authority may give the necessary approvals for automated road vehicles. The answer to this question was unanimously no with some additional possibilities referring to the above mentioned derogatory measures which are in the hand of the prefect of the region in France (Prefet du de-partment) and the municipality may give exceptional authorization for research in Greece if they are conducted in safe environment and if it complies with the national regulation.

Legal concerns provided by the city authorities

Definition of liability

The main concern of the city authorities seems to be related to the liability: In the document we will refer to the below three types of liability following the classification used in the Deliverable D6 – Final Report of the Study regarding liability aspects of ITS applications and services, ITS Action Plan - Action 5.2, Robert Yen, 2012.12.07 in order to keep our work conform to the already existing work in this particular field of ITS. The relevance to comply with the above mentioned document is that it stud-ied in details the liability aspects of the automated driving providing not only conclu-sions in this field but suggesting recommendations as well. The recommendations of the above deliverable will be stipulated among our findings as they seem to be highly relevant in our case as well.


Contractual liability:

Liability imposed on an entity by the terms of a contract. As used in insurance, the term refers not to all contractually imposed liability but to the assumption of the other contracting party's liability under specified conditions. 18

Each country has its own legal basis for contractual liability, often with (many) references to non-contractual liability in bordering legal areas, such as tort law. Based on our high-level overview, it is assumed that there are generally no big dif-ferences between the analysed countries. However, the need for traders to adapt to the different national contract laws makes cross-border trade more complex and costly compared to domestic trade. A Common European Sales Law could improve this situation.19

Product Liability:

Product liability is the area of law in which manufacturers, distributors, suppliers, retailers, and others who make products available to the public are held responsible for the injuries those products cause. Although the word "product" has broad conno-tations, product liability as an area of law is traditionally limited to products in the form of tangible personal property.20

Although Directive 85/374/EEC on product liability has led to a significant har-monization of liability for products in the EU, still national differences in product lia-bility laws exist. This applies to, for example, the notion of safety defect (e.g. in Germany from the viewpoint of the “most endangered and least informed consum-er”; in France it depends on the judge’s supreme estimation) and the extent to which suppliers are imposed the same liability as the producer (e.g. in Germany and France yes; in the UK not directly).21

Tort liability:

Legal obligation of one party to a victim as a results of a civil wrong or injury. This action requires some form of remedy from a court system. A tort liability arises because of a combination of directly violating a person's rights and the transgres-sion of a public obligation causing damage or a private wrongdoing. Evidence must be evaluated in a court hearing to identify who the tortfeasor/liable party is in the case.22

There is no uniform concept of tort law at EU level and many countries have dif-ferent starting points when it comes to tort liability. In the EU, the “fault” system is

18

http://www.irmi.com/online/insurance-glossary/terms/c/contractual-liability.aspx

19 D6 – Final Report of the Study regarding liability aspects of ITS applications and services, ITS

Action Plan - Action 5.2, Robert Yen, 2012.12.07, pp 22-23

20 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Product_liability



22 http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/tort-liability.html


the traditional system used to determine an appropriate source for compensation for damage, for example caused by the use of an ITS application or service. However, strict liability systems have emerged alongside the fault liability system to counter-balance its inefficiencies. It appears difficult to clearly separate between these sys-tems: in some countries more than one system co-exist, in other countries the fault system has been replaced entirely and again in other countries the fault system re-mains at base except that the breach of duty is predetermined (e.g. related to acci-dents with vulnerable road users). Generally, many countries use strict liability rules for compensation purposes, although causation is still an issue to identify the ulti-mate liable party. The legal systems in Germany and the United Kingdom provide that liability will only be imposed on a driver if he acted with fault, i.e. negligently or even intentionally. In the UK liability must be proven; in Germany there is a pre-sumption of fault. France introduced a strict (no-fault) liabilitywhenever a motor ve-hicle is “involved” in an accident (Law No. 85-677 of 5th July 1985).23

To highlight the background of the liability issue in a special environment such as the automated vehicles the following discussions from the field of robotics24 may be relevant for contractual liability:

• "The robot is considered as a simple product

o the robot is the object of the contract of sale between the sell-er/manufacturer and the buyer/user.

o The seller must comply with legal rules governing this institution.

• Furthermore, the robot can be regarded as "consumer goods"

o The buyer is protected by various provisions on commercial guar-antees and remedies in case of lack of conformity seen above.

o The robot looks like a mere object of exchange, a product or a commodity.

o The application of traditional rules on liability for breach of con-tract does not seem to cause any problem.

In conclusion, the existing legislation, both at European and (presumably) na-tional level, does not seem to require any addition or modification in relation to the fact that the object of a contract is a robot."

Concerning product liability the case of robots seems to be more regulated when a robot causes damage because of its manufacturing defects:

• "The product liability Directive 85/374 establishes the principle of objec-tive liability (liability without fault) of the producer in cases of damage caused by a defective product. If more than one person (manufacturer, supplier or importer) is liable for the same damage, this is joint liability.

23

D6 – Final Report of the Study regarding liability aspects of ITS applications and services, ITS


24 http://eurobotics-project.eu/


• ECC provides a similar general rule in case of defective product"

In the case of the application of tort liability the when a robot causes damage simply acting or reacting with humans in an open environment the following obser-vations and statements can be done:

• "New generation of robots are equipped with adaptive and learning ability implying a degree of unpredictability in the robot’s behaviour.

• Considering the robot as a mere product, as an object as in the Directive on manufacturer’s liability is be inadequate

• The robot’s conduct, although attributable at the program set by the pro-grammer or the manufacturer, could not entirely been planned in its spe-cific details because of the increase of experience made by the robot on its own.

• What happens if damage is not derived from a defect of the robot, but from its behaviour?"

The outcome of the discussion is that this is an open issue as today there is no ad hoc tort rules for cognitive robots: "The legal framework should be traced to the traditional categories of liability. Analogy between an animal and a moving object (has already been used in the US Courts). The parental model might be assumed, assimilating cognitive robots to children. Another solution may be to equip cognitive robots with an ethical code of conduct."

Concerns related to liability

Who is driving the vehicle?

This question is highlighting the fact that the city authorities are depending on the interpretation of the Vienna Convention on road traffic as mentioned in the chapter of International legal framework. In many countries the national legisla-tion provides definition for the different actors such as the vehicle, powered vehi-cle, driver, road, etc. The answer to this question is the most important in order to to address the responsibility of driving in non-standard condition (such as inci-dents, accidents). This question is closely linked to the next one which is asking directly about the responsibility:

Who is responsible, liable in case of an accident?

This is a real concern which is linked to the liability issue: liability of intelligent transport systems must be addressed in order to clarify who is responsible for what while operating such a system. As mentioned before this gap creates incer-titude among the different stakeholders – mainly among the system operators – blocking the deployment of such systems.

In case of mixing normal transport modes and (fully) automated transport systems, how to instruct the users of those vehicles and inform other road users?

The information of other road users, and mainly those vulnerable road users (cyclists, pedestrians) but also vehicle drivers about an approaching automated


road vehicle is addressing related to the traffic code. The question of infor-mation, priority has to comply with the existing traffic law in the given country.

Responsibility is always on the driver according to the current legislation. What to do if no driver is available on the vehicle?

The question is again about who is driving the vehicle and who is responsible in case of incidents or accidents. Remote control of the vehicle can be consid-ered to answer this question and an interpretation of the term "driver on the ve-hicle" should be addressed.

The responsibility of the local authority providing the authorization for the demonstrator is a major concern.

The mayor of the city or in the case of the French demonstrator the prefect of the region is providing as derogatory measure the authorization for the demon-stration. It is up to the project to convince these authorities and provide proof of the safety of the system in order to get the authorization.

Liability in case the vehicles are damaged by the users

Insurance companies have to be involved to ensure the vehicles in case any damage made by the users. The use of on board surveillance cameras is to be considered.

It is important to note that Vantaa from Finland has noted that they do not have any technical concerns or legal barriers except the liability issue to resolve before the deployment of the demonstration.

Concerns related to the lack of specific legal framework

Lack of legal framework specific to the automated road vehicles

The main obstacle is the classification of the automated vehicle. Due to the fact that it is not covered by any existing regulation, it is not able to be conven-tionally insured and needs to be worked around in cooperation with insurance companies and the manufacturers. Typically if any accident occurred there might be a problem with the responsibilities assignment. It is a fact that many insur-ance companies would be able to insure the vehicle, “one way or another”, but as it is a pioneer initiative, having no plates and existing insurance classification, it would be a bit difficult to clearly declare and cover potential incidents.

None of the countries have specific legal framework for automated road ve-hicles therefore the answers are mentioning fallback solutions such as the im-plementation of "guided vehicles" which falls under the legal framework regulat-ing trams and railways or derogatory measures where local/regional authorities may authorize for research/demonstration purposes the temporary deployment of automated road systems: In Greece the municipalities are authorised to con-duct such trials in cases they are conducted in a secure environment if the Na-tional Traffic Regulations are applied and of course a corresponding municipal decision grants this activity.


Missing standards specific to automated vehicles

Until today only SAE has started to develop standards specific to automated road transportation. Related standards are being developed for robotics by ISO TC184 Automation systems and integration, for advanced driver assistance sys-tems by ISO TC204 Intelligent Transport systems and for vehicle related safety by ISO TC22 Road vehicles. In order to make relevant, automated vehicle spe-cific standards available in Europe CEN should start to create synergies be-tween robotics related standardization, ITS and vehicle related standardization which could provide European and national specifications to support deployment of automated transport systems.

How to address mixing normal transport modes and (fully) automated transport?

In several sites the track of the fully automated transport vehicle should be fully segregated from the traditional traffic: In Italy in terms of legislation and au-thorization, the main concerns are that the rules and requirements imposed could be so strict as to make the system extremely expensive and severely limit its performance. These requirements may include fixed barriers to segregate the driveway from other users of the street, moving bars to prevent unauthorized ac-cess across pedestrian and vehicle crossings, very low speed limits, presence of a human supervisor on board etc. In addition to this another issue is the cross-roads with other vehicles. The automated transport system cannot have priority and block the crossing road, as it is a main road (no traffic light would be easily allowed for the amount of vehicle transiting the street).

In countries where this won't be compulsory the most important is how to deal with the interaction between the automated vehicle and the traditional traffic in road crossings, in mixed lanes to attract the attention of other road users to the automated vehicles. Use of yellow beacon and/or sound signal should be considered to inform the road users about the automated vehicles approaching.

The vehicles have to be adapted to the different requirement of the different operation sites mainly driven by the legal environment as explained above.

Vulnerable road users

Pedestrians and cyclists represent an important issue: in segregated areas no vehicles may enter but heavy pedestrian and eventually cyclist traffic may be expected. Low speed limit, human on-board supervisor and/or visual and audible warning may be considered to address this concern.

Concerns related to other factors

People’s reaction and suspiciousness on such vehicles is an important factor towards the deployment of fully automated road transport.

People are in most of the cases are suspicious towards new technologies: therefore an information campaign is necessary. A good solution may be to pro-vide visual briefing such as the safety briefing card of the civil aviation, open day events where demonstrators explain the system and the use of it.


Integration of the system into an existing environment

The deployment of the system should be done after due consideration of land usev and urban transport needs.

Other information provided by the candidate sites

La Rochelle and Sophia-Antipolis noted past experiences with regards to the au-tomated vehicles: in both cases the experience is related to the predecessor of CityMobil2. In both cases some minor incident was reported which was managed by the operators.

Lausanne has referred to the "Serpentine" project and the pilot running a Navia vehicle from Induct:

"The “Serpentine” is a transport mode made of small cabins on wheels without driver, powered and controlled by an invisible magnetic rail concealed in the floor. In July 2001, a test track of 330 metres is installed in Lausanne on the lake shores near the Olympic museum. This test track has been first banned and then allowed by the OFT to present the project at the “Car Free Day” on 22 September 2001. The prototypes were tested during periods authorized by the OFT. The OFT has then determined that there was not a train but a trolleybus project. The system must therefore respond to the Vienna Convention of 1968 on traffic that states that a driv-er is needed inside the vehicle. The cabins are removed from the dock in August 2004.

A Navia vehicle, from Induct Company, presently runs at the “École Polytech-nique Fédérale de Lausanne” (EPFL) since approximately one year. "

Concerning the validation of automated transport systems most of the sites re-ported negatively: no validation procedures is available for Belgium, in Greece, in It-aly and in Switzerland. For the site in the CERN the General Director's approval is required. In France the national Decree of 9th May 2003 may be applicable which is regulating the certification of "guided vehicles" – which is relevant for automated transport vehicles if "virtual rails" are used. In Finland and in Greece the EU ap-proach is being used implementing EU norms and standards.

The cities have identified their national authorities which are responsible for the certification of the vehicles:

In Belgium the Federal Public Service for Mobility and Transport, in Finland the Finnish Transport Agency and the Finniash Transport Safety Agency of the Ministry of Transport, in France the STRMTG (national Technical Agency) of the Ministry of Infrastructure and Tourism, in Italy the Motorizzazione Civile of the Ministry of Transport, in Spain INTA Instituate of the Ministry of Industry and in Switzerland the ITV (entity responsible for the vehicles technical inspection) of the Ministry of Indus-try is responsible for the certification of the vehicles. From Trikala, Greece our part-ner reported no such a national entity adding that "municipalities are authorized to conduct such trials in cases they are conducted in secure environment, the National Traffic Ragulations are applied and of course a corresponding municipal decision grants this activity".

This concludes the question of vehicle validation and suggests that ad-hoc measures (testing, certification) will be used in most of the countries.


5. Conclusions and recommendations

During the discussion with the participating candidates the following sites an-swered the questionnaire: Brussels (Belgium), Vantaa (Finland), la Rochelle (France), Sophia-Antipolis (France), Trikala (Greece), Milan (Italy), Oristano (Italy), Leon (Spain), San Sebastian (Spain), CERN (Switzerland) and Lausanne (Switzer-land). They have provided information concerning their legal environment, legal concerns, experiences with automated vehicles, about the authorities proceeding with vehicle certification/homologation and about blocking factors

As result of the city interviews it is clear that most of the concerns are related to the liability issues: who is responsible in case of incidents, accidents, damages, etc. Another identified issue is the lack of legal framework which addreses these issues in the particular area of ITS. In addition to this the concept of automated vehicles is not covered by any international, European or national traffic law. In some of the countries there are some derogatory measures which may be exploited in order to proceed with the demonstrations. In order to do so the following measures will be necessary to be developed, implemented and deployed.

1. Disclaimers towards users while using the system (visual/vocal adver-tisement, leaflets, etc).

A system providing video streaming or audio streaming inside the vehi-cle or in the bus stop could help to disseminate the necessary information to the vehicle users. A paper-based document – leaflet/safety card could be added to extend the outreach of this measure as well.

Figure 6. An example for an aircraft safety instruction card


2. Specific contractual clauses between the cities and the car manufactur-ers/system providers.

This recommendation should be implemented by the contracting parties to clarify all liability related issues and if needed involve a third party (insur-ance company).

3. Vehicle/system approval/certification.

The scope of the Citymobil2 work package 26 is to develop a certifica-tion proposal which will use the information provided by this present deliv-erable. Related measures such as development of automated vehicles specific safety requirements standards (similar to ISO 26262 series docu-ments) needed.

4. Insurance to cover financial liability risks.

This should be an integrated part of the contract between the city and the system provider (see above).

5. Training of the users

It is adviceable to provide all necessary means to the users of get famil-iar with the new type of transportation and avoid unnecessary reactions in case of the use of the vehicle.

6. Develop/adopt a Code of Practice/Guidelines

ACEA has adopted a Code of Practice for Advanced Driver Assistance Systems developed initially by the PreVENT project's RESPONSE3 sub-project. The CoP has been the basis of the development of ISO 26262-x:2011 series standards. The ACEA CoP should be an important input to consider the development of a similar document for automated urban vehi-cles25 as being planned by the project AdapIVe's subproject RESPONSE4.

7. Follow international, European and national standards (such as ISO 26262 series standards) and define gaps

Deliverable D26.1 has identified the relevant standards which need to be considered during the development and the deployment of the systems. These standards are also relevant for the certification process therefore they will be a key element to the deliverable D26.3 and D26.5

8. Use of Operational and Event Data Recorders

Data loggers may provide valuable data for further analysis and evalua-tion. It may be used to prove the reliability of the systems. This can facili-tate the work of future deployment efforts and can be used for dissemina-tion purposes.

25

http://www.acea.be/images/uploads/files/20090831_Code_of_Practice_ADAS.pdf


The above measures can address the concerns of the authorities but the most relevant solution will be to adapt the legal environment to the changing technical environment. As fully automated driving is considered as "liability sensitive"26 and actually there is no appropriate legal answer to address these issues it is adviceable to consider legal actions and develop a European Directive for certification – which is in fact the scope of the work package 26:

"For the field of highly and fully automated driving functions new liability issues will occur and at the moment no appropriate remedial solution ap-proaches exist. But the challenges in this field are even deeper and affect law. Due to the paradigm shift that the role of the “driver” of a vehicle will develop in direction of a “passenger” the foundation of existing road traffic regula-tions are touched which means that the Vienna convention on road traffic and all national road traffic regulations might need a fundamental revision or addi-tional amendments."

We disagree with the above measure and think that with the clarification of the liability issues and the certification/homologation proposal we provide appropriate measures to start with the deployment.

"For vehicles equipped with highly and fully automated driving functions it shall be assessed the need and feasibility of developing, at international level, safety and test requirements in the corresponding vehicle regulations, e.g. UNECE or EC type approval regulations.

Basic safety requirements which have to be met by all automated driving functions should be defined with the participation of the stakeholders, aiming at achieving a maximum consensus among the stakeholders."27

This above second statement is more relevant for us – to agree and standardize safety requirements specific for automated vehicles (this is a gap today) for Europe-an (CEN) and international (ISO) level which may lead to strong certification-type approval scheme therefore the above considerations may be useful for the delivera-ble D26.6 Certification directive proposal.

26

D6 – Final Report of the Study regarding liability aspects of ITS applications and services, ITS

Action Plan - Action 5.2, Robert Yen, 2012.12.07


Action Plan - Action 5.2, Robert Yen, 2012.12.07, p 62


ANNEX A – EC Directives related to transport

Reference Titles Date of

publication

Transposition

deadline

2006/0094 Directive 2006/94/EC of the European Par-

liament and of the Council of 12 December

2006 on the establishment of common

rules for certain types of carriage of goods

by road (codified version) (Text with EEA

relevance)

27/12/2006 Codification

2006/0126 Directive 2006/126/EC of the European

Parliament and of the Council of 20 De-

cember 2006 on driving licences (Recast)

(Text with EEA relevance)

30/12/2006 19/01/2011


liament and of the Council of 17 May 2006

amending Directive 1999/62/EC on the

charging of heavy goods vehicles for the

use of certain infrastructures

17/05/2006 10/06/2008


liament and of the Council of 15 March

2006 on minimum conditions for the im-

plementation of Council Regulations (EEC)

No 3820/85 and (EEC) No 3821/85 con-

cerning social legislation relating to road

transport activities and repealing Council

Directive 88/599/EEC (Text with EEA rel-

evance)

11/04/2006 01/04/2007


liament and of the Council of 18 January

2006 on the use of vehicles hired without

drivers for the carriage of goods by road

(codified version) (Text with EEA rele-

vance)



liament and of the Council of 29 April 2004

on minimum safety requirements for tun-

nels in the Trans-European Road Network

30/04/2004 30/04/2006



on the interoperability of electronic road

toll systems in the Community (Text with

EEA relevance)

30/04/2004 20/11/2005


liament and of the Council of 11 February

2004 amending Council Directive

14/02/2004 17/11/2004


92/24/EEC relating to speed limitation de-

vices or similar speed limitation on-board

systems of certain categories of motor vehi-

cles

2003/0127 Commission Directive 2003/127/EC of 23

December 2003 amending Council Di-

rective 1999/37/EC on the registration doc-

uments for vehicles (Text with EEA rele-

vance)

16/01/2004 15/01/2005


liament and of the Council of 15 July 2003

on the initial qualification and periodic

training of drivers of certain road vehicles

for the carriage of goods or passengers,

amending Council Regulation (EEC) No

3820/85 and Council Directive 91/439/EEC

and repealing Council Directive

76/914/EEC

10/09/2003 10/09/2006


April 2003 on adapting to technical pro-

gress Council Directive 96/96/EC as re-

gards the testing of exhaust emissions from

motor vehicles (Text with EEA relevance)

08/04/2003 01/01/2004


April 2003 adapting to technical progress

Directive 2000/30/EC of the European Par-

liament and of the Council as regards speed

limiters and exhaust emissions of commer-

cial vehicles (Text with EEA relevance)

08/04/2003 01/01/2004



amending Council Directive 91/671/EEC

on the approximation of the laws of the

Member States relating to compulsory use

of safety belts in vehicles of less than 3,5

tonnes

09/05/2003 09/05/2006


liament and of the Council of 5 November


92/6/EEC on the installation and use of

speed limitation devices for certain catego-

ries of motor vehicles in the Community

04/12/2002 01/01/2005


June 2002 adapting to technical progress

Council Directive 1999/36/EC on trans-

portable pressure equipment (Text with

EEA relevance)

07/06/2002 01/01/2003



liament and of the Council of 11 March

2002 on the organisation of the working

time of persons performing mobile road

transport activities

23/03/2002 23/03/2005


liament and of the Council of 18 February


96/53/EC laying down for certain road ve-

hicles circulating within the Community the

maximum authorised dimensions in nation-

al and international traffic and the maxi-

mum authorised weights in international

traffic

09/03/2002 09/03/2004


February 2001 adapting to technical pro-

gress Council Directive 96/96/EC on the

approximation of the laws of the Member

States relating to roadworthiness tests for

motor vehicles and their trailers — func-

tional testing of commercial vehicles' speed

limitation device (Text with EEA rele-

vance)

17/02/2001 09/03/2003


February 2001 adapting to technical pro-

gress Council Directive 96/96/EC on the

approximation of the laws of the Member

States relating to roadworthiness tests for

motor vehicles and their trailers (Text with

EEA relevance)

17/02/2001 09/03/2002

2001/0002 Commission Directive 2001/2/EC of 4 Jan-

uary 2001 adapting to technical progress

Council Directive 1999/36/EC on trans-

portable pressure equipment (Text with

EEA relevance)

10/01/2001 01/07/2001


September 2000 amending Council Di-

rective 91/439/EEC on driving licences

(Text with EEA relevance)

21/09/2000 30/09/2003


liament and of the Council of 6 June 2000

on the technical roadside inspection of

the roadworthiness of commercial vehicles

circulating in the Community

10/08/2000 09/08/2002


liament and of the Council of 17 June 1999

on the charging of heavy goods vehicles

20/07/1999 01/07/2000


for the use of certain infrastructures


May 1999 adapting to technical progress

Council Directive 96/96/EC on the approx-

imation of the laws of the Member States

relating to roadworthiness tests for motor

vehicles and their trailers (Text with EEA

relevance)

05/06/1999 01/10/2000

1999/0037 Council Directive 1999/37/EC of 29 April

1999 on the registration documents for

vehicles

01/06/1999 01/06/2004


1999 on transportable pressure equipment

01/06/1999 01/07/2003 (de-

cision of

25/01/2001)

1998/0076 Council Directive 98/76/EC of 1 October

1998 amending Directive 96/26/EC on

admission to the occupation of road haulage

operator and road passenger transport oper-

ator and mutual recognition of diplomas,

certificates and other evidence of formal

qualifications intended to facilitate for these

operators the right to freedom of establish-

ment in national and international transport

operations

14/10/1998 01/10/1999

1997/0026 Council Directive 97/26/EC of 2 June 1997

amending Directive 91/439/EEC on driv-

ing licences

07/06/97 01/01/98

1996/0096 Council Directive 96/96/EC of 20 Decem-

ber 1996 on the approximation of the

laws of the Member States relating to

roadworthiness tests for motor vehicles and

their trailers

17/02/97 09/03/98

1996/0053 Council Directive 96/53/EC of 25 July

1996 laying down for certain road vehi-

cles circulating within the Community the

maximum authorized dimensions in nation-

al and international traffic and the maxi-

mum authorized weights in international

traffic

17/09/96 16/09/97

1996/0047 Council Directive 96/47/EC of 23 July

1996 amending Directive 91/439/EEC on

driving licences

17/09/96 30/06/96


1996 on admission to the occupation of

road haulage operator and road passenger

transport operator and mutual recognition

of diplomas, certificates and other evidence



of formal qualifications intended to facili-

tate for these operators the right to freedom

of establishment in national and interna-

tional transport operations

1994/0072 Council Directive 94/72/EC of 19 Decem-

ber 1994 amending Directive

91/439/EEC on driving licences

24/12/94 01/01/95

1992/0106 Council Directive 92/106/EEC of 7 De-

cember 1992 on the establishment of

common rules for certain types of com-

bined transport of goods between Member

States

17/12/92 01/07/93

1992/0006 Council Directive 92/6/EEC of 10 February

1992 on the installation and use of speed

limitation devices for certain categories of

motor vehicles in the Community

02/03/92 01/01/93


cember 1991 on the approximation of the

laws of the Member States relating to com-

pulsory use of safety belts in vehicles of

less than 3,5 tonnes

31/12/91 01/01/93

1991/0439 Council Directive 91/439/EEC of 29 July

1991 on driving licences

24/08/91 01/07/94


1990 amending Directive 84/647/EEC on

the use of vehicles hired without drivers for

the carriage of goods by road

31/07/90 31/12/90


1989 on the approximation of the laws of

the Member States relating to the tread

depth of tyres of certain categories of motor

vehicles and their trailers

03/08/89 01/01/92

1988/0599 Council Directive 88/599/EEC of 23 No-

vember 1988 on standard checking pro-

cedures for the implementation of Regula-

tion (EEC) No 3820/85 on the harmoniza-

tion of certain social legislation relating to

road transport and Regulation (EEC) No

3821/85 on recording equipment in road

transport

29/11/88 01/01/89


cember 1984 on the use of vehicles hired

without drivers for the carriage of goods by

road

22/12/84 30/06/86

1983/0572 Council Directive 83/572/EEC of 26 Octo-

ber 1983 amending Directive

65/269/EEC concerning the standardization

28/11/83 01/01/84


of certain rules relating to authorizations for

the carriage of goods by road between

Member States and the First Council Di-

rective of 23 July 1962 on the establishment

of common rules for certain types of car-

riage of goods by road between Member

States

1982/0050 Council Directive 82/50/EEC of 19 January

1982 amending the first Council Di-

rective, of 23 July 1962, on the establish-

ment of common rules for certain types of

carriage of goods by road between Member

States

04/02/82 01/01/83


cember 1979 amending the First Di-

rective on the establishment of common

rules for certain types of carriage of goods

by road between Member States

24/01/80 01/07/80


cember 1976 on the minimum level of

training for some road transport drivers

29/12/76 20/12/78

1974/0149 Council Directive 74/149/EEC of 4 March

1974 amending the first Directive on the

establishment of certain common rules for

international transport (carriage of goods by

road for hire or reward)

04/03/74 01/07/74

1962/2005 EEC: First Council Directive on the estab-

lishment of certain common rules for inter-

national transport (carrying of goods by

road for hire or reward)

06/08/62 31/12/62

2004/0051 Directive 2004/51/EC of the European Parliament

and of the Council of 29 April 2004 amending

Council Directive 91/440/EEC on the development

of the Community’s railways

30/04/2004 31/12/2005


and of the Council of 29 April 2004 amending

Council Directive 96/48/EC on the interoperability

of the trans-European high-speed rail system and

Directive 2001/16/EC of the European Parliament

and of the Council on the interoperability of the

trans-European conventional rail system

30/04/2004 30/04/2006


and of the Council of 29 April 2004 on safety on

the Community’s railways and amending Council

Directive 95/18/EC on the licensing of railway un-

30/04/2004 30/04/2006


dertakings and Directive 2001/14/EC on the allo-

cation of railway infrastructure capacity and the

levying of charges for the use of railway infra-

structure and safety certification (Railway Safety

Directive)


and of the Council of 19 March 2001 on the in-

teroperability of the trans-European conventional

rail system

20/04/2001 20/04/2003


and of the Council of 26 February 2001 on the

allocation of railway infrastructure capacity and

the levying of charges for the use of railway infra-

structure and safety certification

15/03/2001 15/03/2003


and of the Council of 26 February 2001 amend-

ing Council Directive 95/18/EC on the licensing of

railway undertakings

15/03/2001 15/03/2003


and of the Council of 26 February 2001 amend-

ing Council Directive 91/440/EEC on the devel-

opment of the Community's railways

15/03/2001 15/03/2003

1996/0048 Council Directive 96/48/EC of 23 July 1996 on

the interoperability of the trans-European high-

speed rail system

17/09/96 08/04/99

1995/0018 Council Directive 95/18/EC of 19 June 1995 on

the licensing of railway undertakings

27/06/95 27/06/97

1991/0440 Council Directive 91/440/EEC of 29 July 1991

on the development of the Community's railways

24/08/91 01/01/93


ANNEX B – The Questionnaire and answers from the cit-ies

1. Is there a specific legal framework in your country regulating automated road (or other) transport systems?

Brussels – Belgium: No

Vantaa – Finland: No

La Rochelle – France: Yes there is, not on automated road transport but on guided vehicles. Cybercars can be considered as guided vehicles as long as we can demon-strate they stay on predefined tracks. Ex.: modes in the ski resorts, automated metro, etc.

The pre-defined route can be a virtual one.

Sophia-Antipolis – France: Legislation: Decree 2003-425 concerning the guided vehicles in public transport services. Private company may deploy automated vehicle on its own private territory but this is not very useful for the project. In a doubtful case the decision/authorization may fall back to the office of the department prefect in case of special cases such as demonstrations, research etc. (experimental project).

Trikala – Greece: In Greece no such legal framework exists.

Milan – Italy: There is some for the underground metro line (i.e.: Milan, Turin, Bre-scia). The difference between the metro and the CityMobil2 project is the level of seg-regation. With a high level of segregation, we can use the existing legal framework.

Oristano – Italy: NO, although existing rules have been applied to rail based, fully segregated automated transport systems to grant permanent permission to operate. Please see attached document

Leon – Spain: There is not.

San Sebastian – Spain: No specific. Public authorities are working on it but nowa-days the current “General regulation of vehicles” is the legal framework in Spain and the most of rules are standards and based on the European legal framework.

CERN – Switzerland: As mentioned during Milan Steering committee EPFL had al-ready contacted local and national authorities to analyse the legal framework for au-tomated vehicles. CERN didn’t replicate this initiative as it had already been done. Hence, EPFL would probably be able to provide more detail info on the topic.

Lausanne - Switzerland: No. The legal framework in Switzerland is governed by the Federal Law on Road Traffic. This law regulates traffic on public roads as well as civil liability and insurance for damage caused by motor vehicles, cycles or similar devic-es. The law is however not applicable to automated road transport system as they are not driven by a driver.


2. Is it possible to indirectly apply a different set of rules to automated road transport systems?

Brussels – Belgium: This question is not very clear. It would be dependent on the kind of automated road transport systems and the circumstances in which they are used. If in a certain way a person would monitor the vehicle, a different set of rules might even not be necessary. Things could also be easier if they drive only on dedi-cated lanes

Vantaa – Finland: Current framework allows does not restrict us from experimenting automated transport systems.

La Rochelle – France: Yes, under a derogatory rule signed by the mayor. This hap-pened in 2011 during the demonstration in La Rochelle.

Sophia-Antipolis – France: It is possible in case of an experiment.

Trikala – Greece: There is a chance to present the envisaged automated vehicle as another type of vehicle, i.e. a vehicle moving in tracks, although it would not be quite realistic and literally out of the project’s scope. As there is no existing framework, the only feasible legal workaround would be to use existing regulations interpreting “at will” either the vehicle to be used or the classification of the used route (traffic calming classification). For example, it may be treated as a compatible vehicle, for sure plac-ing a driver in the ‘cockpit’ and applying the National Traffic Regulations, providing it with special traffic criteria for classification and using traffic calming routes.

Milan – Italy: We have no related experience, but the Italian Ministry of Transport would like to apply the legal framework of other transport systems (ex.: underground) and then have a comparison

Oristano – Italy: YES, this set of rules will be defined by the relevant authority, which in Italy is the “Ministry of Infrastructures and Transport”, through its technical body the “Ufficio della Motorizzazione”. The new rules will allow to test the system, and will im-pose limits of route, time and performance. Again, see attached document

Leon – Spain: First we check the technical characteristic of the vehicle. Then two in-stitutions “Directorate General of Traffic” and “National Institute of Aerospace Tech-nology” will set up a set of rules specifically.

San Sebastian – Spain: The rules of the general legal framework of vehicles regula-tion must be applied. Anyway the public authorities think that the most difficult step would be vehicle homologation. If it is obtained by the Ministry of Industry, the rest of the steps could be easily completed for a R&D project within a segregated area.

CERN – Switzerland: At CERN, the Director General has the possibility to edit spe-cific rules applicable on CERN sites. Currently the road rules have been made appli-cable on the CERN sites through operational circular approved by the Director Gen-eral. A deviation of this could be sought through a new operational circular for ARTS along a well identified route. However this approach hasn’t yet been tested at man-agement level.

Lausanne – Switzerland: No


3. Are municipal/local governments entitled to authorise the implementa-tion and operation of automated road transport systems? If so, is there an existing law allowing automated vehicles at local level?

Brussels – Belgium: There is no existing law at local level. Authorization on that lev-el is possible on condition that it is in line with the existing legal framework at federal level.

Vantaa – Finland: No. Local law cannot be done. Only adaptation of the national ministry.

La Rochelle – France: Yes, but no specific law. The mayor has to sign an “arrété” al-lowing the operation and defining the specific rules. This is temporary, but time limita-tion is not an issue.

Sophia-Antipolis – France: The department prefect can do it exceptionally. After the local government can have the authorisation – amenagement ponctuel to do.

Trikala – Greece: In principle, municipalities are authorised to conduct such trials in cases they are conducted in a secure environment, the National Traffic Regulations are applied and of course a corresponding municipal decision grants this activity. Cur-rently no such law exists.

Milan – Italy: No. There is no authority at local level on this matter. The Italian Minis-try of Transport will authorise ad hoc. The application is under draft for Milan and will be submitted in September 2013

Oristano – Italy: NO, as far as we are aware, there is no such discretionality at local level (see attached document)

Leon – Spain: No, this is not allowed. We entirely depend on the national institutions. Municipalities can only regulate road traffic enforcement and circulation (change or forbid circulation) but always taking into account national rules.

San Sebastian – Spain: Municipal government has competences to enable the infra-structure (e.g. traffic lights). If something affects road safety then DGT (Dirección General de Tráfico, it means the national entity for traffic regulation) will be the main authority.

CERN – Switzerland: See answer 2.

Lausanne – Switzerland: As far as we know, no. The law on road traffic and the procedures relating thereto are the authority of the Cantons or the Confederation but not of lower levels of decision. The Federal Office of Transport (OFT) and the Federal Office for Roads (OFROU) are the national bodies dealing with matters related to transportation (vehicles and infrastructures).


4. What are your main concerns related to the operation of fully automated road vehicles/systems?

Brussels – Belgium: Who is driving the vehicle, who is responsible, liable in case of an accident, the mix between normal transport modes and (fully) automated transport systems, the instructions towards the users of those vehicles and the information to-wards the other road users,...

Vantaa – Finland: Not technical concerns. But who makes decisions for the trip � Responsibility. Liability. Responsibility is always on the driver (current legislation). Remote control of the vehi-cle can be considered.

La Rochelle – France: Civil liability with an insurance company. Regulations and pe-nal responsibility of the mayor. It is not certain that a new mayor will keep the same policy (the current mayor will not apply for re-election).

Sophia-Antipolis – France: Interaction with the road users, accidents. Degradation of the public objects / vehicles.

Trikala – Greece: People’s reaction and suspiciousness on such vehicles, safety and adaptability to the city’s selected site.

Milan – Italy: At local level the main issue is crossroads with other vehicles. We would like to have segregation. For pedestrians is easier to solve. Our transport sys-tem cannot have priority and block the crossing road, as it is a main road (no traffic light would be easily allowed for the amount of vehicle transiting the street). A bridge or underpass might be better (Via Gallarate is the main road)

Oristano – Italy: In terms of legislation and authorization, the main concerns are that the rules and requirements imposed could be so strict as to make the system ex-tremely expensive and severely limit its performance. These requirements may in-clude fixed barriers to segregate the driveway from other users of the street, moving bars to prevent unauthorized access across pedestrian and vehicle crossings, very low speed limits, presence of a human supervisor on board etc.

Heavy pedestrian traffic will be a source of issue.

Leon – Spain: Road Security and safety is the main concern, especially relation of vehicle with pedestrian

San Sebastian – Spain: DGT told us the “Road safety”.

CERN – Switzerland: Liability in case of accident and defaulting technology

Lausanne – Switzerland: As an office in charge of urban and land use planning, the urban integration on public domain of this new transport system is our main concern. We want the system to be designed in close relation with its environment and not only as an additional tool deposited randomly in the territory.


5. Is there any past or present experience in your city about automated road (or other) vehicles? Would you have a record of incidents with fully automated vehicles?

Brussels – Belgium: I am not aware of experiments with fully automated vehicles.

Vantaa – Finland: No experience. No incidents record. Some experience with drones, but no accident record

La Rochelle – France: 2008 small showcase in a closed environment (awareness raising).

2011 CityMobil small demonstrations of three months (LaRochelle no partner of the project). In public road, mixed environment and interaction with other cars and pedes-trians. No problem at all with pedestrians except in the first week the system needed adaptation (brutal breakings were solved).

Record of incidents on fully automated vehicle: 1 – small crash with a car when the inattentive driver went backward towards the vehicle (the automated vehicle was not moving, so full responsibility with the driver). 2 - the automated vehicle lost the signal and went on the pavement of the station (no people injured as it was during the test phase).

During heavy rain, which is a problem for lasers, demonstrations were suspended at that time.

Sophia-Antipolis – France: Yes, in Antibes we had one week demonstration with the CityMobil project, no incident – only one event when the vehicle did not stop with the director of the transport of the city on board.

Trikala – Greece: There is no documented past experience. Alternatively, it would be highly preferable to keep such a record.

Milan – Italy: We have no experience. Our only experience is on underground metro.

I recall only one accident one or two years ago (with driver) when an underground train crashed another train.

Metro line 5 was stopped last week. This is the first problem that happened ever with driverless metro.

We will try to ask the metro company a record of “any incident that disrupted the nor-mal operation of the transport system.”

Oristano – Italy: NO to both questions

Leon – Spain: Never in Leon. Some experience in Spain in rural scenarios.

San Sebastian – Spain: No in San Sebastian. In Spain only R&D projects (e.g. tests in IDIADA for SARTRE project).

CERN – Switzerland: No.


Lausanne – Switzerland: Yes. The following experiences have been or are being conducted around the city of Lausanne, Switzerland:

The “Serpentine” is a transport mode made of small cabins on wheels without driver, powered and controlled by an invisible magnetic rail concealed in the floor. In July 2001, a test track of 330 metres is installed in Lausanne on the lake shores near the Olympic museum. This test track has been first banned and then allowed by the OFT to present the project at the “Car Free Day” on 22 September 2001. The prototypes were tested during periods authorized by the OFT. The OFT has then determined that there was not a train but a trolleybus project. The system must therefore respond to the Vienna Convention of 1968 on traffic that states that a driver is needed inside the vehicle. The cabins are removed from the dock in August 2004.

A Navia vehicle, from Induct Company, presently runs at the “École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne” (EPFL) since approximately one year.

The city of Lausanne has an automated metro since October 2008.

6. What rules or procedures are currently applied to validate automated road (or other) transport systems at central and/or local level (even to authorise demonstrative projects)?

Brussels – Belgium: There is no procedure for validating automated road transport systems

Vantaa – Finland: Legal analysis conducted on the restrictions for automated vehi-cles. The most advanced cars (ex.: Mercedes S series) already have a sort of auto-mated pilot mode for some roads. There are no technical concerns and no legal bar-riers except liability. EU approach (EU norms and standards) will be followed. Our Research and development is leaving the development of automated vehicles to OEMs.

La Rochelle – France: French National decree of 9th May 2003 concerning the certi-fication of guided vehicles (includes automated vehicles if “virtual roads” are demon-strated) for public roads.

Sophia-Antipolis – France: No validation exists today. National validation is the place to do this.

Trikala – Greece: There is no recorded precedented.

Centrally, an EU directive should exist and afterwards be adapted by Greek National Traffic Regulations.

Locally, the Municipal Authorities could organise a demonstration with the corre-sponding municipal decisions, setting the framework and all required parameters

Milan – Italy: We need to build a procedure with the Italian Ministry of Transport, starting with a roadmap. We cannot use anything already existing. CityMobil2 is a


good opportunity to build one also for the future. CityMobil1 was conducted in a pri-vate area and totally segregated.

Oristano – Italy: We would let CTL answer this question. Also, see attached docu-ment

Leon – Spain: Carry out the testing plan to certify them. This is compulsory before the implementation of the vehicle. Active and passive safety are tested in INTA. The test could be less cumbersome if certification is run in other MS.

San Sebastian – Spain: From DGT point of view the most difficult procedure that must be completed is the vehicle homologation, and it should be done by ITV (entity for vehicles’ technical inspection) depending on the Ministry of Industry. After that, if vehicle homologation is obtained from this Ministry (Industry), pending steps (matricu-lation, and so on) could be easily completed if a R+D project is declared within a seg-regated area for a specific period of time and with the support of the local govern-ment.

CERN – Switzerland: It would require the Director General approval.

Lausanne – Switzerland: No

7. Is there a regulatory body in your country in charge of automated road (or other) vehicles certification? Would you consider beneficial to set up a meeting with this regulatory body?

Brussels – Belgium: The relevant regulatory body is WP29 on the UNECE (United Nations Economic Commission for Europe) which manages the international agree-ments on the harmonization of vehicle regulations. At the Belgian level, the Approval department of the Federal Public Service Mobility and Transport certificates the vehi-cles allowed on Belgian roads.

Vantaa – Finland: Under the Ministry of Transport there is a body/agency, called Finnish Transport Agency, in charge of the infrastructure of road traffic. When we are talking about automated vehicles we consider it as part of the infrastructure (system).

Finnish Transport Safety Agency (we) is responsible for safety and environment, so we also have part of responsibility.

A meeting should have the presence of at least both agencies.

A meeting is not very interesting for general discussion, unless you have concrete in-struments to present, so we can analyse the restrictions.

La Rochelle – France: French National Agency called STRMTG (National Technical Agency under the French Ministry for Infrastructure and Tourism) for safety of road transport, so automated vehicles fall under their scope.


A meeting with them and CityMobil2 representatives has been set for 6th September 2013.

CityMobil2 will present a system for validation, not only the vehicle.

Sophia-Antipolis – France: Ministry of Transport. Thinks the meeting is very useful with the ministry.

Trikala – Greece: There is no such regulatory body.

Milan – Italy: Motorizzazione Civile (branch of the Italian Ministry of Transport) for road vehicle. Then another permit might be needed from the management of public transport and/or from the road network branch of the Ministry.

Oristano – Italy: As mentioned before, the regulatory body in charge of this matter at National level is the “Ufficio della Motorizzazione”. We have already carried out a pre-liminary meeting, a set of documents are about to be sent to this office, and a further meeting will be held soon. We consider it very beneficial to have a continuous and regular communication and exchange of information with the National regulatory body especially since we are dealing with innovative “never-seen-before” means of transport, which may lead to making incorrect assumptions and take wrong decisions, unless meetings are held and doubts are clarified.

Leon – Spain: INTA is very interested in automated systems. They are developing their own vehicles and they want to implement them in the city centres. The real bar-riers are from the local authorities. Especially economical barriers and safety.

San Sebastian – Spain: The Ministry of Industry is in charge of it through the INTA Institute that is a working with us on several projects.

No problem because INTA is working on several projects with some Spanish partners of Citymobil2.

CERN – Switzerland: Same as in Lausanne

Lausanne – Switzerland: EPFL is currently involved in a certification procedure with the cantonal and federal entities described above. You should see with them about the details of this procedure. The meeting with the regulatory body is mandatory to move towards a certification.

8. Are there any obvious parameters preventing the legal implementation of automated vehicle demonstrations?

Brussels – Belgium: A lack of a specific legal framework means that within the mar-gins of the present legal framework many possibilities are left open; this will need some creative thinking.

Vantaa – Finland: No there is not. The only real and serious issue remains liability

La Rochelle – France: No


Sophia-Antipolis – France: The DDTM (department's transport authority – the pre-fect), and the road operator thinks no obstacle is observed right now

Thinks to arrive to do the demonstration of 6 months is important. Technopole 's pop-ulation may have positive impact on the public opinion.

Trikala – Greece: The main obstacle is the classification of the automated vehicle. Due to the fact that it is not covered by any existing regulation, it is not able to be conventionally insured and needs to be worked around in cooperation with insurance companies and the manufacturers. Typically if any accident occurred there might be a problem with the responsibilities assignment. It is a fact that many insurance compa-nies would be able to insure the vehicle, “one way or another”, but as it is a pioneer initiative, having no plates and existing insurance classification, it would be a bit diffi-cult to clearly declare and cover potential incidents. Thus, a practical solution would be to insure the vehicle for coverage on any third party type of damage, which is pro-vided by all insurance companies.

Milan – Italy: Implementation in via Gallarate and related accidents.

Oristano – Italy: NO. There are no obvious parameters that can prevent this imple-mentation, at least for the limited time frame of the CM2 demonstator. Our main con-cern, as previously stated, is that the various requirements could sum up to make the implementation very complex and expensive

Leon – Spain: Support from INTA is very important, and we have it. We lack the user acceptance. The opinion of population is very important for the politicians. Costs for a vehicle carrying 15 people might be questioned as last week the bus operator com-pany (costing 6 million euros per year) will reduce the lines and will fire few drivers.

San Sebastian – Spain: As it is mentioned above, the most difficult issue, but not impossible, is the vehicle homologation (ITV- Ministry of Industry). Infrastructure as-pects could be adapted by the municipal/local government; even though the general rules must be indicated by DGT.

Moreover, municipality must segregate the selected site and must define the specific period of time for the demonstration (site selection & time period specification for ve-hicles running). All of this should be included within the local traffic ordinance through one additional annex.

CERN – Switzerland: Who will be liable in case of incident/accident?

Lausanne – Switzerland: Two things: the absence of a driver in the vehicle and the fact that automated vehicles do not match the criteria of any class of existing vehicles

Documents

Legal concerns related to the deployment of fully automated urban