Studying On Legal Liability Of Self-Driving Car Traffic Accident

The popularization of autonomous vehicles has become an inevitable trend.The driving mission is mainly done by the self-driving system in the high-level self-driving cars.When traffic accident involving the self-driving cars occure,some legal issues come up: Should self-driving system bear legal liability according to the strong intelligence? Should the manufactures of the self-driving cars bear no fault liability for the damages due to the technical complexity of the self-driving system?should the owners of self-driving cars be responsible?This paper mainly adopts literature research method and comparative research method,and analyzes the legal responsibility of self-driving system,manufacturers and owners from the perspective of the nature of the legal liability and its relationship with the free will,and then combines the research of this field in China and other advanced countries to explore a reasonable and efficient path to achieve the legal liability.The intelligent driving system doesn't have the free will and the capability to become a legal personhood,so it can't assume the legal liability;the legal liability of the manufacturers depends on that if the defectiveness of the products is foreseeable.If the manufactures can foresee and avoid the defectiveness of the products but they couldn't,they will assume the liability.Due to the difficulties of the plaintiff obtaining the evidence,the burden of the proof should be transferred to the manufactures,they should bear fault-assumption legal liability;the owner is the “owner”,that is,the risk-controller and the operating beneficiary,shall bear no-fault liability.Combined with the legislation of the advanced countries in this field,the common flaws are: the cost and predicament of fault recognition;high premiums will hinder the healthy development of the autonomous driving industry.Therefore,this dissertation attempts to establish a no-fault compensation mechanism,the compensation fund,which is paid by the manufactures and the owners,anddetermines the amount of the fund's contribution by referring to its profit space through their possibilities of traffic accidents leverage,which will be both beneficial to the timely compensation for the victims' losses and the sustainable development of the autonomous driving industry.