context: This completes a sequence that ran standards-first, law-second. The PRC co-led drafting of the UN global technical regulation for L3-and-above automated driving with the EU, UK, US, Canada and Japan; issued its own mandatory national standard in August, effective July 2027; and licensed the first two L3 models for restricted road use in December 2025. What was missing was statutory footing, since none of those instruments is national law. Shifting liability from driver to manufacturer places the PRC among the earlier jurisdictions to legislate this, after Germany's 2021 amendment. Scope remains narrow in practice: L2 systems, now on over 60 percent of new cars, fall outside the chapter entirely.
A revision of the Road Traffic Safety Law was submitted for first reading to the 24th session of the 14th National People's Congress Standing Committee on 25 August, adding a dedicated chapter on autonomous vehicles that for the first time defines their legal status, conditions for road use and allocation of liability in national law. The core change is that traffic violations committed while an autonomous driving function is active are handled against the manufacturer or importer, while vehicles with the function inactive, or carrying only driving-assistance functions, remain governed as non-autonomous vehicles
- what the chapter does
- defines autonomous vehicles and driving-assistance functions
- assigns handling of traffic violations committed with autonomous functions active to manufacturers and importers
- keeps vehicles with functions inactive, and those with assistance functions only, under existing rules
- gives road access, violation handling and insurance for autonomous vehicles a basis in higher-order law
- the policy sequence up to now
- the intelligent connected vehicle access and road-use pilot notice was issued in late 2023, first designating the pilot operator as the party primarily liable for accidents and requiring L3 and L4 vehicles to carry at least C¥5 million in dedicated liability insurance
- the first list of approved L3 models came out 15 Dec 2025, two of them cleared for pilot operation in designated areas of Beijing and Chongqing, covering congested urban roads and motorways respectively
- in August 2026 the mandatory national standard was issued, effective 1 Jul 2027, the country's first mandatory standard for L3 and L4
- none of these instruments is national law, a gap this revision fills
- the L2 and L3 divide
- under the standard is conditional automation, with the vehicle performing all driving tasks within a defined operational design domain and issuing a takeover request when conditions are exceeded
- L2 performs lateral and longitudinal control only, with the driver monitoring throughout and bearing full responsibility
- L3 is treated as the dividing line, where both the driving role and liability transfer from human to system while the function is active and within its design domain
- the large number of L2-equipped models on the market fall outside the chapter
- Cui Dongshu 崔东树 China Passenger Car Association head
- says legal lag has become acute as L2 penetration rises fast, reaching 65 percent of new energy passenger vehicles
- calls the revision a shift from patchwork amendment to structural reconstruction by dedicated chapter
- says the main significance is drawing the liability line clearly, moving from full driver responsibility to manufacturer responsibility when the function is active, elevating the logic from industry standards to national law
- argues carmakers can no longer play word games, since only vehicles meeting safety requirements can be sold and liability is now defined, ending the pattern of marketing 'smart driving' while evading responsibility
- an unnamed autonomous driving specialist
- says assistance systems are improving fast but are not foolproof, and marketing that dramatises system capability has led some users to over-trust them
- says messaging that blurs L2 and L3 creates safety risks
- argues L3 is not only a change of liability but a demand for extreme technical redundancy from manufacturers
- issues left to resolve
- manufacturers must ensure systems accurately recognise and follow traffic signals, speed limits and lane markings while active
- boundary scenarios such as the system disengaging moments before a crash will need to be clarified in regulatory practice