Short answer. Not automatically. Driving makes you a principal by indispensable cooperation only if you knew what was planned and your act was one without which the crime could not have been accomplished. If it could have been committed without you, a lesser liability, or none, may fit.
What the law says
Those who cooperate in the commission of the offense by another act without which it would not have been accomplished.
Revised Penal Code, Article 17 — Who Counts As Principal. Read the full provision →
The task you performed is not what the test asks about
There is no rule in the Code that a driver is a principal, and none that a driver is not. Art. 17 describes conduct, not roles: those who cooperate in the commission of the offense by another act without which it would not have been accomplished. The question is what your driving did in the particular case, and cases differ sharply. Carrying people to a place they could have reached on foot is not the same as being the only means of getting them in and out of somewhere remote. The label attached to the job settles nothing either way.
Indispensability is the whole of the third description
The clause supplies its own standard: the act must be one without which it would not have been accomplished. That is a demanding requirement. Assistance that made the crime easier, faster or safer, but that the others could have managed without or arranged another way, does not meet it. Where that is the position, the law places the person lower down the scale, as an accomplice, whose penalty is not the same as a principal's. Where the crime genuinely could not have gone ahead without what you did, the third description is capable of reaching you.
Knowing what the driving was for
Cooperation in the sense the article uses assumes you were acting in the commission of the offence, so what you knew is not a side issue. A driver who was told the trip was an errand and who learnt what had happened only afterwards is in a different position from one who was told the plan and agreed to wait outside. Knowledge can be shown by what you were paid, what you saw carried into the vehicle, what was said in your hearing, and what you did once it became clear. None of that is assumed against a person; it has to be proved.
What actually resolves a case of this kind
Almost everything turns on a sequence that only you can supply in full: who engaged you, in what terms, what you were told, where you waited, whether you could have left, and what you did next. Records that fix the timing — messages, trip logs, fuel or toll receipts, camera footage — often matter more than what anyone remembers. No outcome follows automatically from having been at the wheel. Set the sequence out for a lawyer, with the documents, before you give a statement to anybody else.
Related provisions
- Revised Penal Code, Article 16 — Who Are Criminally Liable
- Revised Penal Code, Article 17 — Who Counts As Principal