Autonomous Vehicles: Legal Governance of Civil Liability Risks

The advancement of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies has driven transformative shifts in transportation, evidenced by the accelerated transition of autonomous vehicles from controlled trials to large-scale public implementation. However, this technological evolution has exposed unprecedented civil liability risks that surpass the governance capacity of conventional traffic legal frameworks. This urgency calls for establishing a systematic legal governance framework focused on liability allocation rules, designed to address the unique challenges of civil liability risks in autonomous driving systems. This paper systematically examines international and domestic autonomous vehicle classification standards alongside Chinese current legislative landscape governing autonomous vehicle technologies. It analyses accountability dilemmas arising from human-machine shared control in advanced driving assistance system, progressing to imputation challenges triggered by the full delegation of operational control in autonomous driving systems. To address distinct technological phases, we propose a layered governance model: for driver-assist vehicles, a technical intervention audit mechanism under the fault liability framework; for autonomous vehicles, a tripartite liability hierarchy involving end-users, owners, and manufacturers.