On December 15, 2020, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, and Transport (the “MOLIT”) published the Ethics Guideline, Cybersecurity Guideline and Level 4 Production/Safety Guideline for self-driving cars. Although these guidelines have no legal force, the Cybersecurity and Level 4 Production/Safety Guidelines may later become part of the Automobile Safety Standards, which are legally binding. The key details of the guidelines are summarized below:
1. Ethics Guideline for Self-Driving Cars
The driving principle of the Ethics Guideline is to prioritize human life over animal harm or financial loss, and to minimize personal and societal loss from accidents. As actionable principles, the guideline lists transparency, safety, security and responsibility. The guideline also provides ethical standards for the different entities that interact with autonomous vehicles: for designers and manufacturers, to prevent modifications or hacking in the designing or manufacturing stage; for managers, to establish infrastructure necessary for self-driving and take appropriate safety measures; for consumers, to refrain from making arbitrary modifications to or misusing self-driving vehicles.
2. Cybersecurity Guideline for Self-Driving Cars
The Cybersecurity Guideline explicitly states that manufacturers should implement various security processes within autonomous driving systems, such as processes to identify, assess, classify and manage security threats. With regards to the security of the vehicle itself, the guideline requires manufacturers to take measures to identify, assess and respond to security threats and conduct sufficient security tests in advance. As specific measures, the guideline mentions (i) detection and prevention of cyberattacks, (ii) risk monitoring support and (iii) data forensics to analyze cyberattacks.
3. Level 4 Production/Safety Guideline for Self-Driving Cars
The Level 4 Production/Safety Guideline lists specific aspects that are critical to different safety areas. In terms of (i) system safety, the guideline mentions technical safety, regions of vehicular operation, cybersecurity, telecommunication safety, cooperative autonomous driving system, and wireless software updates as key aspects for minimizing design errors and malfunctions and guarding the vehicle against cyber threats. For (ii) driving safety, the guideline lists responses to road conditions, HMI, emergency measures, crashworthiness and system restart after accidents, and data-recording devices as critical to minimizing the danger of accidents through safe interactions with variable road conditions and traffic entities (e.g., pedestrians, other vehicles). Finally, with regards to the (iii) safety training and ethical considerations for the proper manufacture/operation of self-driving cars, the guideline mentions user training and ethical considerations.
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