Legal and ethical aspects of autonomous vehicles

With the acceleration of the pace with which artificial intelligence (AI) penetrates our lives, we will, sooner rather than later, move into a world of automated transportation system which will dominate our everyday life and movements, and which has already been – to a certain extent – introduced in the market. Fully autonomous vehicles (AVs) are expected to be widely used within the next decade or earlier, however, technological, and regulatory obstacles may delay their massive use and public deployment. This chapter discusses the main legal and ethical issues deriving from the use of AVs to showcase the regulators’ significant role in providing solutions to such issues. It also makes some propositions for the way forward in relation to issues concerning necessity situations, liability issues and insurance implications, criminal and contractual liability and lastly data implications, before drawing overall conclusions