Research On Tort Liability In Traffic Accidents Of Autonomous Vehicle

With the development of automobile industry,artificial intelligence technology is more and more applied in automobile field.Countries around the world are working to develop,design,manufacture and market autonomous vehicle,so as to get a head start in seizing the global market of autonomous vehicle.China's autonomous vehicle have also entered the testing stage.Beijing and Shanghai have issued normative documents for the testing of autonomous vehicle,providing institutional guarantee for the development of autonomous vehicle cars.But autonomous vehicle cars aren't perfect,and their gradual departure from the driver's control has created problems.The important ones are mainly reflected in ethical choice,privacy protection,legal responsibility and legal status.Only by solving these problems can autonomous vehicle be applied in practice.In terms of legal liability,the most prominent problem is how to allocate the liability when a traffic accident happens to a autonomous vehicle.According to the classification of autonomous driving by Society of Automotive Engineers(SAE)and National Highway Traffic Safety Administration(NHTSA),autonomous vehicle can be divided into assisted-driving cars,conditional self-driving cars and fully self-driving cars according to the standards of intelligent level of self-driving cars.By matching the technical classification of these three kinds of autonomous driving with tort liability law,it is found that the liability attribute of traffic accident of autonomous driving vehicle is a mixed liability of motor vehicle traffic accident liability,product liability and highly dangerous liability.Due to different causality,the three kinds of responsibilities can exist independently or coexist.In addition to the general problems existing in the regulations of traffic accident liability and highly dangerous liability,autonomous vehicle traffic accident infringement have not made a great breakthrough in the two.The two kinds of legal regulations can still be applied in the infringement of traffic accident by autonomous vehicle.Due to the particularity of autonomous vehicle,the existing product liability is challenged in three aspects: defect identification,burden of proof and exemption from liability.To deal with these problems,it is necessary to adhere to the principle of balancing the protection of victims' rights and interests with the development of autonomous vehicle,and start from the principle of considering the particularity of autonomous vehicle on the basis of existing norms.From the establishment of autonomous vehicle product quality standards;Judge the design and manufacturing defects of autonomous vehicle by "skilled driver standard";Inversion of burden of proof;The "science and technology level" in the "development risk defense" adopts the international overall technology level to improve the product liability.In addition,it is supplemented by mandatory product liability insurance for self-driving cars to disperse the risks caused by product defects of self-driving cars and install "black box" to solve the problem of insufficient information in the proof presentation.