Shaping the Future: The Government is Seeking Public Views on Automated Vehicles

Some thoughts on automated vehicles and potential liability claims from DAC Beachcroft;

The Automated Vehicles Act 2024 was one of the last pieces of legislation to receive Royal Assent before last year’s general election. It was a momentous statute, but one that requires a considerable number of regulations before it can be implemented. In the lead up to these regulations, the public will be consulted on a number of issues relating to how automated vehicles (AVs) can be safely incorporated into the UK’s fleet.

On 10 June, the Department for Transport and Centre for Connected and Autonomous Vehicles published the first two of these public consultations on AVs: a call for evidence on the statement of safety principles and a consultation on protected marketing terms.

On 21 July, a third consultation was published focusing on permitting automated passenger services.

Safety principles

The call for evidence, titled ‘Automated vehicles: statement of safety principles’ focuses on codification of the fundamental safety principles that will sit behind all aspects of automated vehicle approval and regulation. Topics covered include:

• Defining the safety standards to be used, including comparing AVs to ‘careful and competent’ human drivers – in other words, precisely how safe should an AV be?;

• Use of safety principles before and after deployment of AVs;

• Assessing the safety impact of AVs on other road users;

• Monitoring AV performance;

• AV cyber resilience.

The call for evidence will inform the drafting of the statement of safety principles, which will be the subject of a separate public consultation before it is laid before parliament.

Protected marketing

The consultation, titled ‘Automated vehicle: protecting marketing terms’, is on protecting certain terms, so that they can only be used to market vehicles authorised as being automated, to the exclusion of Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS).

The Department for Transport does not want the list to be overly prescriptive and has put forward a relatively limited list of possible “protected marketing terms”, noting that other confusing terms would be caught by the general “confusion” offence. The proposed list of terms is:

• Self-driving;

• Drive itself;

• Driverless;

• Automated driving;

• Autonomous driving; and

• Drive autonomously.

We would like to see the list expanded to include versions of words such as: robotaxi and robodrive, autopilot and self-pilot. The consultation page is at this UK Gov site. 

Automated passenger services (APS)

In June, the government announced that it is planning on fast-tracking commercial pilots of automated vehicles from spring 2026. The pilot scheme will require regulation, and this consultation is the first step in achieving that.

In bringing forward implementation of the APS permitting scheme, the government has three goals: providing clarity for organisations that wish to deploy a commercial service, as well as helping further inform it about the in-use challenges and benefits of APS.

It is expected that the government will use the data it collects from APS schemes to improve the regulatory framework for automated vehicles before full implementation of the Act. The Consultation on Passenger vehicles is here. 

Comment

All three of these consultations should be of interest to motor insurers.

The statement of safety principles call for evidence will largely shape the expectations for how safe AVs are compared to competent and careful human drivers, and the means by which the safety standards of AVs are measured and monitored. Insurers are advised to focus their responses on this consultation in particular, as it will give them the chance to have a say in an area where they will encounter a new set of risks for which they will be directly liable under the Automated and Electric Vehicles Act 2018.

The protected marketing consultation should assist in ensuring a reduction in consumer confusion around AVs, in turn reducing risk and increasing consumer confidence in this emerging technology.

The APS consultation is important because will it help shape the regulatory framework for the very first AVs on the UK’s roads, including principles relating to data sharing and consequences to service providers for non-compliance. Additionally, the pilot’s performance is likely to have a strong impact on the viability of AVs more widely in the next few years.

Peter Allchorne is a partner and head of Strategic Advisory and Michael McCabe is a solicitor at international law firm DAC Beachcroft.