AUTONOMOUS VEHICLES VIGILANCE SYSTEM: PROPOSAL FOR A THEORETICAL LEGAL FRAMEWORK.

Today’s road traffic system is functional due to acomplex set of rules. The key element of the system is anatural person in the driver’s seat that makes decisions. These decisions may vary from driver to driver, yet all of them can still be compliant. When talking about autonomous vehicles, there is anotion that they need to be instructed on how to behave in all possible situations. However, autonomous vehicles can adopt the same variety of decisions as human drivers do. On top of that, they can communicate with other vehicles, infrastructure, and the surrounding environment. As aresult, autonomous vehicles can solve tasks together in acooperative manner. Such shift in the capabilities of vehicles is so significant that we should not be asking how to make autonomous vehicles conform to the rules, but instead how to structure the rules so that they can conform with autonomous vehicles. This paper aims to present aposition on the latter question. Firstly, it describes key features of autonomous vehicles. Secondly, it takes into account relevant legal research in the field of autonomous mobility and identifies the problems that autonomous vehicles pose to the concept of liability. Finally, it provides asummary of key elements for atheoretical legal framework that can encompass autonomous vehicles. An autonomous vehicles vigilance system is proposed as apart of asolution to the liability problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]