Current Legislation
USA
As mentioned in the overview, only 34 out of the 50 states have any legislation on use of autonomous vehicles. On top of that, there are no federal laws or regulations on autonomous vehicles, only laws at the state level. These laws are intended to restrict and regulate the use of level 4 and 5 autonomous vehicles, but generally these only regulate the use in general of autonomous vehicles, and have a very basic and limited safety standard that the vehicles have to adhere to.
19 of the 34 states require a ‘minimal risk condition’, as mentioned previously, and that is (usually) their only safety requirement of the vehicle(Autonomous Vehicle Statutes and Regulations Across the 50 States. 2024). This means that there is no standard for on-road behavior or how accurate the autonomous systems are, and thus autonomous safety standards have become somewhat of a wild west. It is up to each company to decide how the vehicle should act in different situations, and how much testing they need to do to determine that the vehicle is unsafe. There is a dire need for better regulation of the testing and manufacturing setups and procedures of these vehicles, and it would a great idea to look to the EU to determine how other countries are handling this.
Similarly, there is no standard in the US about how cars should react to ethical dilemmas, such as recreations and variants of the trolley problem. Should they care about protecting the occupants at all costs? what if the occupants are on their deathbed? how do you decide who’s life is more important? And should that be an option for the end user, or something the companies or legislation decides beforehand for everyone? It is situations like this that require significant legislature and discussion to ensure fair and safe practices.
EU
The European Union has significantly more legislature on autonomous vehicles, and importantly, they have legislature on the manufacturing and testing of the vehicles. They have aims to develop at least three large-scale testbeds for autonomous vehicles(Update on Automotive Regulations in Europe, 2025), and they explicitly denote what levels of autonomous vehicles they allow on their roads. They generally have substantially more legislation than the US has on these vehicles, and most countries in the EU also have their own specific regulations. Germany, for example, was the first country in the world to develop legislature allowing up to level 4 autonomous vehicles, and define actually which vehicles they allow. Across the EU, they have developed a framework for regulating autonomous vehicles, using the different levels mentioned here(Traton, 2025), and allows for actual policies instead of the wild west that is still prominent in the US.