According to World Health Organization’s report on road traffic injuries, there are approximately 1.35 million deaths every year caused by road crashes, mostly due to human errors (S.Singh et al., 2021). Thus, car manufacturers are calling for the need of implementing self-driving cars technology in vehicles to massively improve their safety and reliability. Of course, the reasons moving most of the players of the automotive industry towards autonomous vehicles (AVs) are manifold and not only limited to societal benefits, but merely connected to firms’ economic returns. Indeed, car companies are turning their cars into software-based products, setting the scene for data-based business models to lower entry barriers to individual mobility, while offering very attractive service packages for the customers (Aschhoff, R., & Roggenbuck, J., 2021).

Besides, driverless cars necessitate actual guidelines for their autonomous decision-making and for overcrossing the related moral and ethical aspects. So far, few governments and institutions did recognize the need for clear rules and requirements for AVs. Although car manufacturers keep developing and testing self-driving cars to eventually standardize such a disruptive technology that will widely impact our society, the lack of a proper legal framework might have the unintended consequence of slowing down their innovation process.

Moreover, consumers’ concerns do exist, and clear regulations require also to address their fears. It is true that, as driverless cars would be allowed to make critical decisions on public roads, they will potentially choose among types of damage or injuries to different individuals. An exemplary case happened in the US, where a Tesla Model S in “self-driving mode” had been involved in a mortal accident by crashing into an 18-wheeler that turned in front of the car; to avoid the accident, should the AV system have taken “illegal actions” instead of sticking to the rules and ending up in the crash? Also, who must be held responsible in event of an emergency or collision? The owner of an autonomous vehicle might suffer from personal liabilities that are not more under his control; hence, it is arguable as the fault should be attributed to the car manufacturer or to its software.

However, making justified conclusions in such tricky circumstances might be a daunting task, and questions on ethical and legal aspects must have exhaustive answers in order to ensure smooth development and adoption processes of AVs, as its growing market is said it will reach a sales volume of 21 million vehicles by 2035.

Sources

Aschhoff, R., & Roggenbuck, J. (2021). Volkswagen is accelerating transformation into software-driven mobility provider. Volkswagen Newsroom. https://www.volkswagen- newsroom.com/en/press-releases/volkswagen-is-accelerating-transformation-into- software-driven-mobility-provider-6878

Sergeenkov, A. (2019). Competition in the Autonomous Vehicle Industry is Heating Up. HackerNoon. https://hackernoon.com/competition-in-the-autonomous-vehicle- industry-is-heating-up-22524d71ca5

Singh, S., & Saini, B. S. (2021). Autonomous cars: Recent developments, challenges, and possible solutions. IOP Conference Series: Materials Science and Engineering, 1022(1), 012028. https://doi.org/10.1088/1757-899x/1022/1/012028