Evaluation of the legal responsibilities of autonomous ships in maritime accidents

With Industry 4.0, the high expectation that unmanned ships will provide benefits on issues such as cost, risk, capacity and environmental impact accelerates technological developments and paves the way for them to enter our lives faster. However, existing legal regulations, especially in terms of liability law, are not in a position to be applicable to autonomous ships. International maritime organizations and companies have extensive studies on existing legal arrangements. The aim of this thesis is to present a scientific research to fill the legal gaps in the field of unmanned ships, and the scope of this research is the responsibility rules in the field of private law. The study is to examine the findings of previous scientific researches with the literature review method and to reveal a real case of accident with these results with the case analysis method. In the first part of this thesis, the study is outlined, and in the second part, a look at the command ships and their legal status is given. In the third part of the study, international law texts are examined and the legal personality and decision discussion of artificial intelligence is presented. In the fourth section, the discussion of the literature review is given on a sample case, and finally, the conclusions and recommendations are presented in the fifth section. Key Words : Autonomous ship, unmanned ship, maritime law, liability law