European legislators debate robot rights for autonomous vehicles

Robots should one day have rights as "electronic persons," members of the European Parliament recommended Thursday -- but not until the machines are all fitted with "kill" switches to shut them down in an emergency.

Parliament's Legal Affairs Committee wants the European Commission to propose legislation that will settle a number of ethical and liability issues in the field of robotics -- including who is to blame when an autonomous vehicle is involved in a collision.

Granting the more sophisticated autonomous robots some kind of electronic personhood could settle issues of who is responsible for their actions, the committee suggested. More urgent than the question of robot rights, though, is the setting up of an obligatory insurance scheme that would pay out to the victims of a self-driving car if it caused an accident in the European Union.

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