The consumer 'self-driving car' does not legally exist in any of the 50 United States.
March 31, 2026
Original Paper
Highly Automated Vehicle Policy in the United States: Six Questions Exposing the Structural Misalignment Between Perception, Regulation, and Enforcement
SSRN · 6497413
The Takeaway
Despite years of marketing and consumer perception, there is a total structural misalignment between tech company claims and actual law. No vehicle currently available for purchase is legally allowed to operate without a human driver, and the regulatory landscape is so fragmented that a single truck trip can hit six incompatible insurance and enforcement regimes.
From the abstract
Highly automated vehicle (HAV) deployments in the United States are expanding rapidly, yet the policy discourse surrounding them remains shaped by misconceptions about what the technology actually is, who can legally operate it, and what it takes to scale economically, among others. This paper argues that these misconceptions are not information deficits solely resolvable through public education. They are products of three structural forces: (1) American federalism, which distributes regulatory