Allocation of liability for driverless cars: Based on legal economics

With the rapid development of artificial intelligence technology, driverless cars are gradually moving from laboratory technology to market application. This technological revolution not only brings convenience and efficiency enhancement to the society, but also accompanies the legal difficulties of accident liability allocation. The traditional traffic accident liability allocation model is based on the driver's fault to divide the responsibility, but in the driverless scenario, the autonomous decision-making and behavior of the vehicle weakens or even completely replaces the role of the driver, which makes the existing legal framework face significant challenges in dealing with the problem of accident liability attribution. In this paper, we propose an “optimal mechanism” for assigning liability to driverless cars from the perspective of legal economics, with a view to seeking a dynamic balance between technological risks and legal norms. By analyzing the efficiency of liability attribution rules, this paper attempts to provide legal support for the development of driverless technology and institutional guarantee for the fair distribution of accident liability.