Motor Liability Insurance in a World with Autonomous Vehicles

There will be accidents as long as we have vehicles running on the road. This proposition remains unchanged even if we are embracing a world with an increasing number of AVs. From a legal perspective, the emergence of AVs challenges not only our liability rules and safety regulations but also the framework of insurance. This latter aspect has created less discussion despite its importance in risk-shifting and compensation. In EU, the owner of a vehicle is obliged to obtain liability insurance for its registered vehicle. In this article, we argue that AVs will pose significant hurdles for victims when relying on liability insurance for sake of compensation. We critically analyse the direction of adapting the current legal framework and identify the competence of no-fault compensation in the context of AVs. We conclude this article by pointing out some important issues, which fall outside insurance scheme but will have significant implications for the future design of the insurance paradigm for AVs in the EU.