2nd ICAI 2022
International Conference on Automotive Industry 2022
Mladá Boleslav, Czech Republic
episode that causes harm to a person, and through this it is possible to repair damages between those involved. According to Enrico Roberto: Even though they are less accident prone than human drivers, eventually self driving cars will also end up causing damage. Often, such damage will be caused by manufacturing or programming errors, giving rise to the responsibility of the vehicle producer for vice or defect in the product under the terms of the Consumer Protection Code (Roberto, E., 2017). From the point of view of subjective responsibility, since the decision was taken completely autonomously by the vehicle – regardless of themanufacturer’s programming and outside the driver’s sphere of action -, one could hardly speak of negligence or omission under the terms of the Civil Code: Article 186. Anyone who, through voluntary action or omission, negligence or recklessness, violates a right and causes harm to others, even if exclusively moral, commits an unlawful act. Naturally, in semi-autonomous systems (such as all the cars sold so far), in which the autonomous performance of the vehicle is interspersed with human intervention at critical moments, one may speak of negligence or omission if the driver fails to intervene when the vehicle demands it through sounds and lights, for example, or when failing to intervene in clearly dangerous situations: Article 927. Anyone who, by unlawful act (articles 186 and 187), causes damage to another, is obliged to repair it. From the point of view of strict liability of the manufacturer, it should be noted that the autonomous decision taken by the vehicle cannot be a defect in the product. Article 18. Suppliers of durable or non-durable consumer products are jointly and severally liable for defects in quality or quantity that make them inappropriate or unsuitable for the consumption for which they are intended or which reduce their value, as well as for those resulting from the disparity, with the indications constants of container, packaging, labeling or advertising message, respecting the variations resulting from their nature, and the consumer may demand the replacement of defective parts. On the contrary, the ability to make independent decisions and learn from one’s own experience is exactly what makes such products economically attractive and, for many authors, exactly what characterizes them as “artificial intelligence”. Likewise, it is difficult to argue that this is a product defect under Article 12 et seq.: Article 12. The manufacturer, the producer, the builder, national or foreign, and the importer are liable, regardless of the existence of fault, for the repair of damages caused to consumers by defects arising from design, manufacture, construction, assembly, formulas, handling, presentation, or packaging of its products, as well as insufficient or inadequate information about their use and risks. These defects are related to what is known today as “development risk” and which is widely addressed in the literature by Marins, J., (1993), Benjamin, A. H. de V. et al. (1991), Gomes, M. K. (2001), Almeida, J. B. (2000), and Policarpo, N. S (2012). There is no global consensus on the subject, and in Brazil there are two distinct currents: (1)
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