JAPAN Law and Practice Contributed by: Hiromi Hayashi, Daisuke Tsuta, Masaki Yukawa and Keiichi Bando, Mori Hamada & Matsumoto
negligence (including simple negligence) by the defendant to successfully claim for damages. Autonomous Vehicle Accident Liability Under the Act on Securing Compensation for Automobile Accidents, any person who has con - trol over or operates an automobile for their own benefit (eg, an owner or a driver) – the “responsi - ble person” – is liable for damages for the death or bodily injury of another person arising from the operation of the automobile. The foregoing liability, however, does not apply if the responsi - ble person proves that they and the driver exer - cised due care in controlling and operating the automobile, that the injured party or a third party other than the driver acted intentionally or neg - ligently (including through simple negligence), and that there was no defect in the structure or functions of the automobile. One issue is whether this special liability under the present automobile accident compensa - tion framework should be modified to properly address car accidents caused by cars operated by AI, such as holding the car manufacturers lia - ble for damages. The Research Report on Dam - age Liability regarding Autonomous Vehicles, which the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Tourism published in March 2018, concluded that it is appropriate not to modify the existing special liability for automobile accidents during the transition period until 2025 when autono - mous vehicles are expected to be widely used. The report recommended that insurance com - panies that have compensated for damages caused by a defect in any autonomous driving equipment installed in a vehicle should be able to recover the compensation from the car man - ufacturers that installed the defective artificial intelligence-driving equipment.
Based on the recommendation, the Japanese Road Transport Vehicle Act was amended in May 2019 so that any autonomous driving equipment is required to have recording equipment to pro - vide insurance companies with evidence as to the cause of an automobile accident. Data Protection Consideration The APPI has not imposed strict conditions focused only on processing personal informa - tion by AI. The APPI requires business operators using a personal information database in their business (handling operators) to use personal information only within the scope of the pur - pose of use notified to data subjects or publicly announced when collecting personal informa - tion. Therefore, as a general rule, they must noti - fy or publicly announce the purpose of machine learning in order to use personal information for machine learning. Generally, the purpose of generating statistical data by aggregating or analysing a large amount of personal information does not have to be notified to data subjects or publicly announced. However, the purpose of profiling, such as user journey analysis for targeted advertisement and credit scoring, must be notified to data subjects or publicly announced. Further, if handling operators pseudonymously process personal data, they will be allowed to internally use the pseudonymously processed information beyond the original purpose of use that was notified to data subjects or publicly announced when collecting the original data. Thus, handling operators may use pseudony - mously processed information for machine learning even where the machine learning is not included in the purpose of use notified to the data subjects when the personal data was col - lected.
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