Itsestään ajavat autot ja rikosoikeudellinen vastuu
Avainsanat:
algoritmit, rikosoikeus, tahallisuus, tekoäly, tuottamusAbstrakti
Self-driving cars and criminal liability
A lot of time and resources have been invested in the development of self-driving cars over the past decade or so. Even though technological progress has not been as swift as had been anticipated, self-driving cars will be on the road sooner rather than later. Self-driving promises to revolutionise how people travel and commute, but from a legal point of view it also causes a myriad of issues yet to be solved. In the article, the author maps out some of the issues self-driving cars and the technology behind them raise in the field of criminal law. Special attention is paid to the concepts of intent and negligence as defined in the Finnish Criminal Code and to how they can be adapted to a future where cars no longer have human drivers. The author concludes that negligence is better suited for the task since it is theoretically more flexible than intent-based liability. The full scope of negligence liability will depend on future regulation of e.g. the manufacture and testing of self-driving cars. In other words, how we choose to regulate self-driving cars will affect what will constitute criminal negligence. As it is mainly large corporations that are in the business of developing self-driving cars, the focus is likely to be more on corporate criminal liability rather than individual criminal liability.
