자율주행차 운행으로 발생하는 위험에 대한 형법적 대응방향 ― 가상물리시스템으로서의 자율주행차 제조자에 대한 형법적 제조물책임 부과가 갖는 의미와 한계 ―

This Article examines the question of which criminal liability should be imposed on the developer of automated vehicles. The criminal liability of self-driving car developers could be examined in the light of the criminal product liability. But it would be a very rare case that developers of driverless cars would be prosecuted for causing injuries in the event of an accident, because the state of the art defense could be widely recognized in regard to determine whether developers fulfilled their duty to use reasonable care in the design of their automated vehicles. An automated driving system is a complex combination of various hardware and software and the safety of the autonomous cars would be highly dependent on software and electronics. But it is not expected that current criminal product liability theories could effectively resolve disputes regarding problems caused by software defects. Moreover, when applying criminal product liability rules to automated cars, it is considered that there would be no difference between autonomous vehicles and daily necessities such as food and clothing. But an autonomous automobile system is one of the complex networked cyber-physical-systems, which are characterized by the integration of digital information technology and physical production process. So in the age of the autonomous vehicle, we must also be prepared for system accidents, which result from unanticipated interaction of multiple failures in a complex system, but unfortunately the criminal product liability theories do not offer a method to cope with such problems. It seems necessary to redesign the current criminal system to deal with such problems.