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On November 7th 2025, Karol Nawrocki, as President of Poland, submitted a draft amendment to the Act – Road Traffic Law and certain other acts (Draft No. RPW/37332/2025). It is currently under public consultation (link to submit opinions on the draft: logowanie.sejm.gov.pl).

The draft is extensive and generally concerns the legal regulation of the permissibility of operating autonomous vehicles on Polish public roads. At present, such operation is prohibited – only developmental work is allowed, and movement is permitted solely for such purposes.

However, the draft also addresses the civil liability (compensation liability) of the holder of an autonomous vehicle – referred to in the draft as either a “automated vehicle” or a “fully automated vehicle” – and in the body of the draft (specifically, the proposed Article 65n(3) of the Road Traffic Law), there appears a provision concerning this matter with the following wording:

The holder of an automated vehicle or a fully automated vehicle shall be liable for any damage to people or property caused to anyone by the operation of such a vehicle, pursuant to the principles set forth in Article 436 § 1 of the Act of 23 April 1964 – Civil Code (Journal of Laws of 2025, items 1071, 1172, and 1508).

The liability of the holder referred to in the preceding sentence shall not be subject to Article 436 § 2 of the Act of 23 April 1964 – Civil Code, provided that no fault can be attributed to any of the holders or drivers of the vehicles involved in the collision.

Analysis of this legislative proposal must therefore be based on the existing regulation of Article 436 § 1 of the Civil Code, which establishes the compensatory liability of the holder of mechanical means of transport propelled by natural forces.

Accordingly, the logical conclusion of such analysis is that, under current law, an autonomous vehicle is not considered a mechanical mean of transport propelled by natural forces. However, this is not the case, as noted by representatives of the scientific community.

In other words, the first sentence of the proposed regulation is redundant and unnecessary – the Civil Code is sufficiently flexible to also encompass compensatory liability for the operation of autonomous vehicles.

Moreover, the exclusion of the application of Article 436 § 2 of the Civil Code increases the holder’s liability towards persons transported free of charge (i.e., not for remuneration and not under any contractual arrangement, e.g., friends or family members) and leads to  increased liability of the holder of an autonomous vehicle in the event of an accident for which none of the drivers is at fault. Normally, in such accidents, compensatory liability is dependent on the fault of the holder; under the President’s proposal, however, the holder of an autonomous vehicle would bear liability for such an accident.

From this provision, it can also be inferred that the holder of an autonomous vehicle is liable to a victim of a vehicle collision for circumstances beyond their control; nevertheless, evidence that a third party, for whom the holder is not responsible, bears sole responsibility for the accident (e.g., a road authority) does not exempt the holder from liability.

In fact, the President does not address the most fundamental issue regarding compensatory liability, namely, who qualifies as the holder of an autonomous vehicle.

Is it the owner? In principle, yes.

But what about in the case of an accident caused by a rented autonomous vehicle? Liability should rest with the lessee, i.e., the person renting the vehicle.

The President does not seem to recognize that it is possible, in my view, to interpret Article 436 § 1 of the Civil Code such that the holder of the vehicle, given the nature of vehicle control (e.g., calculation of routes, maintenance of traffic data, etc.), would be the person maintaining the system that enables travel from point A to point B.

This raises a significant legal issue: who should bear the risk arising from the operation of an autonomous vehicle?

The draft does not resolve this question at all. Moreover, the justification for the draft contains very little discussion of the compensatory liability regulation provided therein.

It is therefore worth drawing the attention of the Polish Sejm to this issue during the legislative process. Perhaps we will one day see a compensatory liability regime for autonomous vehicles that can be praised for its rationality and soundness of solutions.