Research On Criminal Responsibility In Road Traffic Crimes By Autonomous Vehicles

With the development of autopilot technology,autonomous vehicles will become the key to the safe operation of intelligent traffic.The high degree of autonomic operation makes it possible for autonomous vehicles to replace human drivers as its autopilot system can run stand-alone stably and safely,which provides great help for human's safe and convenient travel.However,the autonomous vehicle is not absolutely safe as it may not make legal,kind and proper decisions as its designers expect in a complicated and changing traffic environment due to its in-depth learning,which will further lead to traffic hazards.And this series of decisions made after the in-depth learning process is hard to be predicted by humans.Because of autonomous vehicles' autonomy of operation,unpredictability of decisions as well as the difficulty in distinguishing causality,the traditional determination of traffic accidence crimes and product crimes are not able to solve traffic crimes caused by autonomous vehicles as the absence of criminal subject and difficulty in distinguishing causality make it hard to determine the criminal responsibility in a crime by autonomous vehicles.Therefore,how to meet the challenge to the traditional determination of criminal responsibility brought by traffic crimes by autonomous vehicles has become an urgent problem in the criminal law at present and for a future period of time.To determine the criminal responsibility of an autonomous-vehicle-caused traffic crime,there are two tit-for-tat arguments existing in the criminal law circle,which are arguments about the subject status of crime and determination of criminal responsibility.This thesis focuses on the above two arguments and starts from commenting on the argument about autonomous vehicles' status as the subject of crime to further discuss the determination of criminal responsibility in a traffic crime by autonomous vehicles under the premise of denying the autonomous vehicles' status as the subject of crime.Next,by analyzing the argument about distribution of criminal responsibility in an autonomous-vehicle-caused traffic crime,it concludes three prerequisites which must be solved before determining the criminal responsibility in an autonomous-vehicle-caused traffic crime—clear subject of responsibility,causality which can be established and content of attention obligation.This thesis aims to provide a feasible solution for the determination of criminal responsibility in an autonomous-vehicle-caused traffic crime based on a detailed analysis of the three prerequisites.To be specific,this thesis focuses on the whole process of autonomous vehicles' research,market and use.It transforms autonomous vehicles' production chain into responsibility chain under the new mode of staged regulation.It means that on the basis of denying the autonomous vehicles' status as the subject of crime,it affirms the status of designers,manufacturers,distributors as well as users of the autonomous vehicle as subjects of crime.They shall be responsible for the autonomous vehicles' out of control when they violate the consequence avoidance obligation and it is also the essence for the above subjects of crime to bear criminal responsibility in an autonomous-vehicle-caused traffic crime.When the above responsibility subjects' violation of the consequence avoidance obligation is determined to have causality relations with the infringement results,the scope and limits of each responsibility subject's violation of the indirect consequences avoidance obligation shall be determined by adopting normative criteria for hypothesizing causality and conducting normalized lenient disposal on the factual causality.After clarifying the above basic relations,the thesis gives further detailed analysis on conditions of intentional crime,criminal negligence and no criminal responsibility of the autonomous vehicles' designers,manufacturers,distributors and users so as to clarify the reasonable threshold for determining criminal and noncriminal in an autonomous-vehicle-caused traffic crime in order to realize the balance between technical innovation and punishment of crimes while solving the challenge to the criminal law by determination of criminal responsibility in an autonomous-vehicle-caused traffic crime.