Artificial intelligence technologies in the field of road safety: problems and prospects

Kalyuzhny Yurii Nikolaevich PhD in Law Docent, the department of Administation of Work of Public Order Units of Staff Training Centre, Academy of Management of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia 125171, Russia, g. Moscow, ul. Zoi I Aleksandra, 8 kaluzhniy-y@yandex.ru Other publications by this author

Artificial intelligence and modern digital technologies in the world practice are actively implemented in various segments of social reality. The capabilities of artificial intelligence are being improved daily, promising to change the permanent shortcomings of the social environment caused by technological progress, including in the field of road traffic and ensuring its safety.

In order to meet the modern realities of public relations, the states of the world are developing technologies for using artificial intelligence and countering new technological threats generated by them.

The formation of a national policy, taking into account the introduction of artificial intelligence for promising and even breakthrough socio-economic development, is an integral attribute of modern reality.

The importance of determining the main directions of the implementation of the state policy of the Russian Federation related to the introduction and development of artificial intelligence technologies in certain sectors of the economy prompted the leadership of our state to approve the National Strategy for the Development of Artificial Intelligence for the period up to 2030 ^[1].

The analysis of the priority directions of artificial intelligence development laid down in the Strategy, as well as the general characteristics of modern technologies based on artificial intelligence, show the possibility and necessity of its application in the field of road safety.

Thus, among the strategic tasks of the development of our country related to the field of road traffic are: the development of standards defining requirements for highways based on the use of digital resources aimed at eliminating accident sites; the development of technologies for monitoring compliance by road users with established rules, as well as traffic management technologies; reducing the density of traffic flow (congestion) on the roads. The implementation of the identified strategic objectives in order to increase their effectiveness is necessary using artificial intelligence technologies and, as a result, will ensure a reduction in the number of deaths in car accidents.

The socio-economic transformations taking place in our state, the setting by the country's leadership of strategic goals and objectives and national priorities for the further development of society and the state are designed to change the system of views and value orientations regarding road safety and, accordingly, the activities of its subjects ^{[2, pp.73-80]}.

T.Y. Khabrieva and N.N. Chernogor point out that a huge increase in the volume of information is inherent in modern society, and the development of artificial intelligence is a technological breakthrough that acts as a significant factor in the development of modern society ^{[3, p.86]}. Progressive technologies of using artificial intelligence are real. They multiply the results obtained with the help of digital technologies, through analytical processing of the accumulated volume of data, allow us to establish the advantages and disadvantages of individual social processes, thereby foreseeing the development of social relations in the real world ^[4]. Artificial intelligence is already capable of solving standard tasks, processing and analyzing documents ^{[5, p.18]}. In this regard, the work of artificial intelligence associated with the processing of a significant amount of data based on available indicators becomes indispensable in relation to the elimination of accident concentration sites and monitoring compliance by road users with the established mandatory rules in the field under consideration.

Artificial intelligence technologies, in accordance with the legislation of our country, comprise electronic vision, speech processing, recognition and synthesis, decision-making and other promising management methods ^[6].

It is noteworthy that in the scientific literature, the authors actively investigate the legal and organizational issues of the use of artificial intelligence in various sectors of the economy, including the improvement of certain areas of the traffic sphere ^{[7, 8, 9]}.

A separate direction of the use of artificial intelligence technologies is the organization of traffic, which allows you to manage traffic flows depending on the congestion of traffic directions by monitoring the process of vehicle traffic and presenting advantages to individual of them (for example, public transport). The use of digital traffic management technologies has been carried out since the 60s of the XX century. At the same time, artificial intelligence technologies are able to "intelligently" build mechanisms for controlling the traffic process, increasing the capacity of highways, creating a comfortable social environment for citizens.

Prerequisites for improving the organization of traffic based on artificial intelligence technologies are laid down in the structure of the national project "Safe and high-quality roads" ^[10].

Representatives of science note that one of the most actively developing areas of the introduction of artificial intelligence technologies is transport. Close attention around the world is paid to the prospects for the introduction and development of unmanned vehicles on public roads, changing modern ideas about the process of road traffic and legal approaches to its regulation.

In our country, testing of the procedure for the use of unmanned vehicles associated with the transportation of passengers and cargo has been ongoing since 2018 ^{[11, 12]} and strategic documents for its development and implementation into social reality have been adopted ^{[13, 14]}, however, it is not necessary to assert their widespread development and participation in road traffic.

The introduction of unmanned transport is associated with the development of standards that define the requirements for this transport, as well as for highways based on the use of digital resources and data exchange between the vehicle and the road infrastructure, which minimizes the possibility of error and the occurrence of an emergency situation.

There is no unambiguous solution to the problems of the introduction of unmanned transport, since the legal, organizational and ideological aspects of the use of the transport in question have not yet been overcome.

In this regard, referring to the semantic content of the concept of artificial intelligence, it seems possible to establish that the analysis of the Strategy for the development of artificial intelligence in this concept includes a set of digital solutions that allow, on the one hand, to reproduce the mental, cognitive activity of a person, and on the other hand, to obtain the results of activities close in meaning to the cognitive activity of a person ^[1].

Developing scientific ideas about mental activity and its results, which are the product of artificial intelligence technologies, it seems problematic to consider the question of the legal status of artificial intelligence, inherently capable of carrying out reasonable, volitional activity, making individual management decisions related to the order of traffic, compliance with the speed of movement, representation of the preferential right of movement to other participants and how investigation, on responsibility for the committed acts. Is it possible to perceive artificial intelligence as a subject of law, or should a person (for example, an operator) bear full responsibility? But, in this case, the management decision should be made by a person, not artificial intelligence, which reduces the speed of execution and decision–making, and in relation to the process of road traffic and vehicle movement in general significantly limits the functional abilities of artificial intelligence to a lower level - digital technologies and individual algorithms.

In this context, it seems justified to refer to the conclusions made by the team of authors under the leadership of Yu.A. Tikhomirov in the study of the legal status of robotics and solving the scientific dilemma of attributing robots to the subject or object of law. So in the modern conditions of the development of law and artificial intelligence technologies, it should definitely be attributed to the object of law, and not to an independent subject.  In the future, the development of the order of application of artificial intelligence in social reality and the endowment of technology with the necessary attributes of capacity in the form of consciousness, one's own will will make it possible to perceive artificial intelligence technologies as a subject of law, which will contribute to the development of legal norms defining the rights, duties, guarantees and responsibilities of robotics ^[15].

Thus, humanity represents the functionality of artificial intelligence, its expediency, necessity, justification and effectiveness of application in the field of road traffic and ensuring its safety, but modern technology development, caution of "trust" in management decision-making technologies, as well as the insufficiency of legal regulation of public relations of the use of artificial intelligence act as a deterrent to the progressive development of states and the sphere ensuring road safety.

Artificial intelligence technologies that go beyond the boundaries of conservative thinking show the development of science and technology ahead of social reality. At the same time, adherence to established views can act as an obstacle to the development of progressive technologies, which has led to a lag in the technological and socio-economic development of our country in comparison with other countries ^{[16, p. 5-10]}.

One of the expressions of artificial intelligence technologies is electronic vision, processing and analysis of the available array of digital data. In this aspect, it is necessary to pay attention to the functioning of the institution of fixing administrative offenses with technical devices that have the function of automatic photo and video recording. An important feature of which is the elimination of the subjective approach of the official to fixing the offense. The development of artificial intelligence technologies makes it possible to consider the possibility of further improving the mechanism for bringing violators to administrative responsibility, including in the issue of sentencing without human participation. In this issue, in the scientific literature, the authors have expressed the problems and prospects of the use of artificial intelligence and digital technologies related to the imposition of punishments ^{[17, 18, 19]}.

By introducing electronic vision technologies, artificial intelligence is given the opportunity to process a huge array of digital data, including personal data. In this aspect, the concerns expressed by A.I. Savelyev in his research regarding the use of such data by artificial intelligence seem completely justified, indicating that the legal norms regulating access to personal data are aimed at minimizing errors in their processing, providing the participant in legal relations with the opportunity to clarify such data. Taking into account the "highly sensitive" basis for processing biometric data and the associated risks of using this data to commit illegal actions, the need for legislative control over their processing by a person is obvious ^[20].

The next significant problem of management activities related to the adoption of procedural decisions is that it is difficult to appeal decisions made by artificial intelligence, which significantly affects the provision of guarantees of the rights and legitimate interests of road users and the real possibility of state control over decision-making. If artificial intelligence has decided to refuse to grant the right to a citizen, then the latter actually has nowhere to appeal, and it is not always possible to explain the decision (for example, a bank employee can only guess why the system algorithm did not provide a loan to the consumer) ^{[21, p. 35]}.

The development of artificial intelligence in the field of traffic will make its process safer, and the provision of public services for citizens more accessible and comfortable. On the official websites of the Ministry of Transport of Russia and the State Traffic Inspectorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia, a set of services has been formed that allow citizens, legal entities and individual entrepreneurs to receive certain services (checking fines, the procedure for obtaining and replacing a driver's license, transportation of passengers and cargo, etc.).

A separate problem characteristic of the use of artificial intelligence, regardless of the type of socio-economic activity of its application, are the threats of hacker attacks, which are difficult to predict, the consequence of which are failures in operation, as well as the possibility of technology to make wrong decisions that have captured a huge number of people with their consequences. This problem is not new for the law enforcement agencies of the countries of the world ^[4] and our state has developed a set of measures aimed at countering these threats, unfortunately, which do not allow them to be excluded in the future.

Undoubtedly, artificial intelligence cannot solve all the problematic issues of road safety, but its capabilities will significantly automate the processing of a huge array of available data (on road users, the number of vehicles and the number of offenses); improve the quality of analytical and planned work in the field of traffic, aimed at identifying the most problematic aspects and developing measures to to ensure the safest movement of transport based on the interaction of their intellectual interaction with each other and the road infrastructure, thereby reducing and subsequently minimizing the number of dead and injured in car accidents.

Technological progress associated with the development of artificial intelligence is actively developing in many sectors of the economy. It is stupid and pointless to ignore it, therefore it is necessary to create comfortable organizational and legal conditions that allow, on the one hand, to ensure the further progressive introduction and development of artificial intelligence technologies in the field of road traffic and ensuring its safety, and on the other hand, to ensure the protection of the rights and legitimate interests of road users from possible threats to its use. The active development and implementation of artificial intelligence technologies in this area is the very tool that allows us to ensure the successful implementation of strategic objectives of socio-economic development of our country.