Abstract
The article focuses on the issue of data governance in connected vehicles through a novel analysis of current legal frameworks in the European Union. The analysis of relevant legislation, judicial decisions, and doctrines is supplemented by discussions relating to associated sustainability issues. Relevant notions of autonomous vehicles are analyzed, and a respective legal framework is introduced. Although fully automated vehicles are a matter for the future, the time to regulate is now. The European Union aims to create cooperative, connected, and automated mobility based on cooperation between different interconnected types of machinery. The essence of the system is data flow, as data governance in connected vehicles is one of the most intensively discussed themes nowadays. This triggers a need to analyze relevant legal frameworks in connection with fundamental rights and freedoms. Replacing human decision-making with artificial intelligence has the capacity to erode long-held and protected social and cultural values, such as the autonomy of individuals as has already been in evidence in legislation. Finally, the article deals with the issue of responsibility and liability of different actors involved in processing personal data according to the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) applied to the environment of connected and automated vehicle (CAV) smart infrastructure. Based on a definition and analysis of three model situations, we point out that in several cases of processing personal data within the CAV, it proves extremely demanding to determine the liable entity, due to the functional and relatively broad interpretation of the concept of joint controllers, in terms of the possibility of converging decisions on the purposes and means of processing within the vehicles discussed.
Highlights
The human rights legal framework applicable for European Union (EU) Member States is included in addition, owing to its significance for social matters that can be argued to be within the scope of social aspects of sustainable data governance for connected autonomous vehicles
Organizations processing personal data clearly fall under the provisions of EU data protection law represented by the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) [48], but different stakeholders may need to follow specific rules, traditionally, requirements of compliance with data protection laws apply to controllers and processors processing personal data about data subjects
It is of the essence to note, that development of Cooperative Intelligent TransportSystems (C-ITS) is backed by legislation and connectivity, and inclusion of connected and automated vehicle (CAV) within the system is one of the cornerstones of future smart and connected mobility
Summary
Introducing vehicles which perform some or all driving tasks onto public roads has been questioned by several legal institutions, in the areas of liability [1,2], privacy, data protection [3,4], traffic law [5], type approval of vehicles [6,7], legal personality of autonomous systems [8], intellectual property rights [9,10], cyber security [11,12], and additional issues. Sustainability 2021, 13, 10610 is to analyze data flow and data governance in autonomous vehicles from the point of view of the current legal framework. As the lege lata has not necessarily been written with automated and autonomous vehicles in mind, analysis and interpretation of the existing legal frameworks required a significant original contribution on the part of the authors to both interpret and apply them to the topic in an appropriate manner. This type of difficulty was especially evident with older legal acts and regulations examined during the research.
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