Introduction

Since the 1990s, when the first adaptive control system was introduced, there has been an increase in automation of road vehicles that progressively utilize more advanced driver assistance technologies and require less and less human intervention. This process will be completed by putting into circulation fully autonomous vehicles, which operate with no human input whatsoever, but rather by means of human-independent driving functions which have been trained by machine learning methods that are often regarded as Artificial Intelligence (AI). Despite all their positive effects (for example in terms of increasing road safety and establishing new forms of urban mobility), the era-changing technological innovations that are on the horizon entail new risks of damage and subsequent liability in road traffic that traditional liability regimes at both the international and national level are already grappling with. The comparative analysis of how jurisdictions across the globe deal with these risks lies at the core of this book. Its introductory chapter first sets out the state of the art of legal regulation concerning automated and autonomous vehicles at the international and European level. It then highlights the answers to a questionnaire provided by the authors of the individual chapters of this book that map the state of legislation related to vehicle automation in selected jurisdictions around the earth. The chapter then goes on to set out in brief the findings in terms of liability for automated and autonomous driving in the each of the jurisdictions analysed in the context of this book. Finally, several observations are presented in relation to the evolving legal framework at the level of the European Union for the manufacturing and operation of AI-driven products, of which the autonomous vehicle is likely to constitute a prominent use case in the not too distant future.