Autonomous vehicles crashing the law? A prospective study of civil liability and compensation implications under Belgian, French, UK/English and EU law

These past years, advances in programming and data science, as well as increased computational power, have fostered the development of powerful intelligent software programs that are gradually being introduced in various fields. So called artificial intelligent (AI) technologies are booming throughout the world where these set of tools have many applications such as transportation.

The alleged benefits of embedding AI technologies in transport vehicles are multiple, ranging from enhanced safety, increased reliability to economic efficiency. Some authors have described it as a mobility revolution in the making. But however beneficial these technologies may seem, their intrinsically disruptive nature will challenge numerous psychological, social, ethical, economic and legal norms.

These autonomous vehicles’ main features, inter alia, the autonomization of the decision-making process, their potentially self-learning and self-adaptive capacities, their increased reliance on data and connectivity, will highly challenge the current liability setting. Through the apprehension of autonomous cars as ‘mobility systems’, functions could be reshuffled and blurred, forcing a re-conceptualization of the field of transportation from a legal perspective.

From the focal point of extra-contractual civil liability and insurance law, the proposed study aims at assessing the legal impact of introducing autonomous transportation vehicles in the current European and selected national frameworks (BE, FR, UK), within the context of the wider mobility ‘ecosystem’. After an initial analysis and evaluation, conclusions will be drawn on the suitability of these liability and insurance frameworks. Finally, recommendations for legal adaptations or normative evolutions will be considered.