Autonomous Vehicles and the Law: A Revolution through the Prism of Civil Liability

The development of autonomous vehicles requires all the countries of the world to adapt their respective legal systems. The scale and complexity of the task is daunting. The law is called upon to enable and even encourage the advent of this revolution, while guaranteeing a fair allocation of the resulting risks and ensuring public safety. What's more, the law must rise to this challenge at a time when it is impossible to predict in the medium term the speed at which autonomous vehicles will enter circulation, or even their degree of autonomy. Adapting civil liability law appears to be the key to success. Faced with the peculiarities of autonomous vehicles, many concepts on which current liability regimes are based will need rethinking. For instance, the complex manufacturing of driving systems multiplies the number of potential liable parties, and the "black box" effect associated with the operation of learning AI increases the burden of proof in the event of a failure.