GENEVA — The world's first regulation for fully driverless vehicles, recently adopted by the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe, or UNECE, marks "a decisive breakthrough" after a decade-long effort, said a senior UN official, while praising China's "significant and constructive" role in shaping the landmark rules.
The UNECE adopted the new UN Global Technical Regulation on Automated Driving Systems, or ADS, in late June. The regulation mandates that manufacturers implement audited and life cycle-wide safety governance and processes, conduct credible testing, and provide structured evidence demonstrating that their ADS poses no unreasonable risk.
It also requires in-service performance monitoring and reporting and a data storage system for automated driving.
"For about a decade now, we've seen early predictions of widespread automated driving failing to materialize. What this regulation does is break that deadlock by creating the world's first global framework to legally enable fully autonomous vehicles," said Francois E. Guichard, secretary of the Working Party on Automated/Autonomous and Connected Vehicles, or GRVA, under the UNECE.
Guichard said the regulation's greatest significance lies in replacing fragmented national approaches with a common international framework, offering regulatory certainty for manufacturers, increasing consumer confidence, and enabling the safe scaling of innovation across markets.
