The self-proclaimed “world-leading” self-driving car regulations it’s now officialafter the Automated Vehicles (AV) Act. received royal assent — the final rubber stamp that any legislation must pass before it becomes law.
The government says fully autonomous vehicles could be on UK roads within two years.
“While this does not remove people from choosing to drive themselves, the landmark legislation means that autonomous vehicles can be on UK roads in 2026, in a real boost to both safety and our economy.” , said the Minister of Transport. Mark Harper said in a statement.
Today’s news comes just weeks after UK-based Wayve raised more than $1 billion from high-profile companies including SoftBank, Nvidia and Microsoft to continue developing a self-learning software system for autonomous vehicles.
As with other countries, the UK has allowed driverless cars on public roads for many years, but with strict rules in place for companies seeking permission to test new technologies. But as the autonomous vehicle industry has evolved and prepared for prime time, the need for a new legal framework has become apparent.
While the initial ground work preceded it by several years, the UK formally proposed the AV Act in a Joint report 2022 published by the Law Commissions of England, Wales and Scotland, which noted that the arrival of autonomous vehicles creates the need for a whole “new vocabulary, new legal bodies and new regulatory systems”. He said:
The introduction of automated vehicles will have profound legal consequences … requiring new regulatory systems and new actors (with new responsibilities and obligations). We are therefore proposing primary legislation — a new Automated Vehicles Act — to regulate automated vehicles on roads or other public places in Great Britain.
Automated Vehicles: Joint Report of the Law Commission of England and Wales and the Law Commission of Scotland
Liability in the event of a self-driving car accident
The UK has been keen to place itself at the forefront of the autonomous vehicle revolution, funding various AV projects and safety-related research programmes. The government has touted the potential safety benefits of self-driving cars by removing human error from the roads, although it acknowledges that accidents will still happen, as evidenced by reports from the US, where self-driving cars are more firmly established. In fact, California has also emerged as a hotbed for proposed AV regulation.
This is why liability is one of the key aspects of the new UK regulation — who will be liable in the event of a crash? The UK clarified this point in 2022 when it published a roadmap that said its new legislation would make companies liable for any accidents, “meaning that a human driver will not be liable for incidents related to driving while the vehicle is in control of driving’.
Each approved self-driving vehicle will have a corresponding “authorized self-driving entity,” which will usually be the manufacturer but could also be the software developer or insurance company. And that entity will be responsible for the vehicle when the self-driving feature is activated.
The government will create a vehicle approval system backed by a “fully independent incident investigation function”, with companies approved to operate under the new regulations expected to meet “ongoing obligations” to ensure their vehicles are safe .
