On September 18, 2020, the European Commission published the report "Ethics of Connected and Automated Vehicles (CAVs)" drafted by a Group of Independent Experts (hereinafter the "Report"), which contains 20 recommendations on issues raised by connected and automated vehicles (hereinafter, “CAV”). These recommendations are intended for three groups of stakeholders:
- Manufacturers and deployers
- Policymakers
- Researchers
Within the 20 recommendations included in the Report, four of them are closely related to the protection of personal data (the rest of the recommendations deal with issues like road safety, driving risks or liability in case of accidents).
The recommendations on data protection emphasize the obligation to collect informed consent when necessary and the obligation to adequately inform the user. Moreover, within each recommendation, there are "sub-recommendations" for each of the three groups to which we have referred.
Below, we identify the four recommendations on data protection that are included in the report and, in addition, the "sub-recommendations" for each of the groups:
Safeguard informational privacy and informed consent
| Manufacturers and deployers | Seek informed consent on CAV data collection, facilitate data subjects’ control over their data and prevent unauthorised access to technical infrastructure and associated data. |
|---|---|
| Policymakers / Researchers | Enforce and enhance data protection legislation to protect CAV user data. |
Enable user choice, seek informed consent options and develop related best practice industry standards
| Manufacturers and deployers / Policymakers / Researchers | Develop agile consent-based user agreements for CAV-based services. |
|---|---|
| Policymakers | Leverage competition and consumer law to counteract monopolies and enable user choice for CAV services. |
| Policymakers / Researchers | Develop industry standards around algorithmic inference addressing ethical data sharing, transparency and business practices and protecting informational privacy and informed consent. |
Develop measures to foster protection of individuals at group level
| Policymakers / Researchers |
Develop ethical and legal guidelines that protect individuals’ rights at group level. Outline strategies to resolve possible conflicts between data subjects’ claims over same data or disputes between data subjects’, data controllers and other concerned parties. |
|---|
Develop transparency strategies to inform users and pedestrians about data collection and associated rights
| Manufacturers and deployers / Policymakers | Develop meaningful, standardised transparency strategies to inform road users (including pedestrians) of data collection in a CAV operating area. |
|---|---|
| Policymakers / Researchers |
Study (and apply):
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