Administrative Legal Consideration on Legal Risks and Responsibilities of Self-Driving Vehicles: Focusing on Public Law Review of German Guidelines and Recently Amended Enforcement Decree of the Road Traffic Act and Comparison and Derivation of Implications of Korea’s Road Traffic Legislation
Authors:   National Public Law Review, Lee Kee Chun 
Published: March 2023

The level of self-driving cars in Korea has reached the third stage of conditional automation. As for self-driving cars, the government promises deregulation in consideration of their public benefits, and the law is also a subject of great interest. At the same time, however, the responsibility of the state, manufacturers, and car owners for the risk of accidents and the risk of infringement of fundamental rights of autonomous vehicles is becoming clearer. However, in this situation, the Korean government has designated a pilot operation zone for self-driving cars, and the pilot operation is scheduled to take place. Accordingly, in the meantime, amendments such as the ｢Automobile Management Act｣, ｢Road Traffic Act｣, and ｢Autonomous Vehicle Act｣ were made, and became the laws for the regulation of the 3rd level autonomous vehicles. In particular, the ｢Autonomous Vehicle Act｣ has the characteristics of a regulation special case law. And recently, Germany announced ethical rules on autonomous vehicles, and revised the Road Traffic Act and its Enforcement Decree in consideration of the 4th and 5th stages of commercialization of autonomous vehicles. The Ethics Committee of the German Federal Ministry of Transport and Digital has developed 20 ethical rules for autonomous vehicles. The core content of the rule is 1) the principle of private autonomy, 2) protection of human beings, 3) authorization and control by administrative agencies, 4) individual right to self-determination, 5) accident prevention and resolution of dilemmas, 6) human network subjectivity, 7) Human priority in profit balancing and programming, 8) Life-to-life choice and dilemma, 9) Disregarding personal characteristics, 10) Responsibilities of system manufacturers or owners, 11) Product liability, 12) Right to information access, 13 ) Complete networking and possibility of central control, 14) Reliability from attacks such as hacking, 15) Right to self-determination of personal information, 16) Distribution of responsibilities according to control, 17) Human safety in case of emergency, 18) Self-determination Dangers of the learning system, 19) self-management of self-driving cars in emergency situations, 20) digital education are presented. This ethical code is a guideline and is not legally binding. However, it serves as a guideline for the development of public laws related to self-driving cars. In addition, the German Road Traffic Act (StVG) for self-driving cars in 2021 became a law accommodating level 4 and 5 self-driving cars with the 「Vienna Convention on Road Traffic」. And there was a revision of the Enforcement Decree in 2022 to materialize this. This revised statute introduced regulations on 1) permission to operate autonomous vehicles and its procedures, 2) technical requirements, 3) duties and responsibilities of manufacturers, owners, and technical supervisors, and 4) information processing. These German ethical rules and laws are thought to provide great benefits to Korea's legislation, which should be developed into a fourth-level autonomous vehicle.