The Research On The Distribution Of Tort Liability For Autonomous Vehicles

Autonomous vehicles,especially those with highly or fully auto-driving functions,because of their “autonomy” of driving,the identity of the driver of such vehicles,and the nature of corresponding driving behavior are significantly different from traditional cars.At present,China’s traffic accident tort liability is stipulated in <Road Traffic Safety Law> and <Tort Liability Law>.The idea of liability distribution lies in the tort behavioral of the vehicle driver.There,the tort liability after a traffic accident caused by a car with highly or fully automatic driving function may not be reasonably applicable to the current distribution system.At the same time,the corresponding tort liability is not naturally distributed to the owner of the vehicle or the car manufacturer under the current law,making this problem cannot be fully resolved under the current system.However,the solution proposed by some scholars and foreign legislative documents to confer legal status for highly intelligent artificial intelligence are not reasonable in the current era of weak artificial intelligence.Regardless of the technical principle,autonomous vehicles do not have any sense of responsibility or rational thinking,and the legal status cannot help solve the social problems they caused.Therefore,the author believes that wee should classify autonomous vehicles from the technical essence and treat different autonomous vehicles in different ways.For cars with only some or conditional self-driving functions,the functions only change the specific driving operation,and the nature of the driver’s driving behavior has not changed.Hence,the driver should still be responsible for its driving behavior.The provisions of the current system can still be applied to this type of autonomous vehicles,and we do not need to amend the provisions.For cars with highly or fully self-driving function,since there is no driver’s driving behavior,in order to obtain reasonable compensation for the victims of traffic accident,it may be considered to introduce the fault-free liability of car owner or expand the scope of responsibility of the car manufacturer’s product quality responsibility by amending current laws.In addition,it is also possible to consider about mandatory liability insurance and the compensation funds to solve theconflicts arising from the new technology.