En-Route to a Driverless City-State: Examining the Current Legal Landscape for Autonomous Vehicles in Singapore

As part of Singapore’s Smart Nation movement, research and development trials for autonomous vehicles are already well underway in Singapore. However, Singapore’s laws relating to autonomous vehicles remain in their nascent stages as the Singapore government is presently still studying the legal consequences of autonomous vehicles and their related technologies. In 2017, the government had set up a ‘regulatory sandbox’ to regulate the trial and use of autonomous vehicles for a period of 5 years, and, in 2019, an industrial standard known as Technical Reference 68 was introduced by the Singapore Standards Council to set out best practices for the deployment of autonomous vehicles on Singapore roads. This chapter will examine the various liability addressees involved in Level 0 to 5 autonomous vehicles (as defined under SAE J3016) based on existing legal principles in Singapore. It will also discuss recent legal trends—including the aforementioned ‘regulatory sandbox’ and Technical Reference 68—and their impact on the future regulation of autonomous vehicles in Singapore.