Criminal Law Risks when Using Unmanned Vehicles

The use of many achievements of the scientific and technological revolution contains risks, including criminal ones. However, this circumstance cannot serve as an obstacle to progress, the instruments of which are these achievements. Obviously, criminal prosecution can only take place when reasonable and minimum requirements are not observed to prevent harm from being caused in a situation in which it should not be done. At the very least, the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation should not interfere with progress, but as a maximum should help it. The norms on unmanned vehicles proposed in the criminal law literature to supplement the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation are intended to serve this purpose. These vehicles imply any unmanned vehicles (UV), primarily autonomous vehicles (AV) and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), unmanned aircraft (UA). A critical analysis of these norms allows us to assert that there is no need to create our own criminal law definition of an unmanned vehicle. It is enough to use the definition that exists in the field-specific, transport legislation. The author rejects an idea to supplement the body of a crime provided for by individual articles of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation with the classifying element “committing a crime with the use of a UAV”. The author finds reasonable to supplement article 63 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation with a rule granting the court the right to decide at its own discretion in what kind of crime the use of the UV (AV, UAV, UA, etc.) should be considered an aggravating circumstance.

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