Institute of Transportation, MOTC

       Recently, many countries have already put effort into the reviews and amendments of the laws and regulations regarding autonomous vehicles (AV). However, in Taiwan, aside from the Unmanned Vehicles Technology Innovative Experimentation Act in 2018, further legislation was not materialized. That is, compared to other countries’ aggressiveness, we do have the need to speed up our legislation.
       Exploration of the legal system can be divided into a central part and a local part, among them, the former has had a certain amount of research results. Therefore, the research explores the lacking part in terms of local legal issues induced by the introduction of autonomous vehicles. The issues include span from local government and regulatory coherence, autonomous buses, maintenance of roadside infrastructure, a transformation of parking forms, financial burdens of local governments, and urban planning. Besides, to seek the effect of “an adaption of local conditions”, several local governments with different economic developments are presented so that the differences between local governments can also be taken into account.
       The study utilizes document analysis, comparative research, focus group interview, and thematic analysis. To summarize the potential legal amendments caused by the development of autonomous vehicles, viewing and comparing policies, regulations, and studies including local government-level AVs-related issues are conducted. Subsequently, focus group interviews and thematic analysis are conducted to acquire and analyze comments from professionals in different fields, which are expected to increase the credibility of the study.