Britain’s self-proclaimed ‘world-leading’ regulations for self-driving cars are now official, after the Automated Vehicles (AV) Act received Royal Assent – the final approval of any legislation before being written into law .
The government says fully autonomous vehicles could be on UK roads within two years.
“While this does not take away the opportunity for people to choose to drive themselves, our landmark legislation means that autonomous vehicles can be deployed on UK roads as early as 2026, providing a real boost to safety and to our economy,” the Transportation Secretary said. Mark Harper said in a statement.
Today’s news comes just weeks after UK-based Wayve raised more than $1 billion from leading companies including SoftBank, Nvidia and Microsoft to continue developing a self-driving software system. -learning for autonomous vehicles.
As in other countries, the UK has allowed driverless cars on public roads for many years now, but with strict rules in place for companies seeking permission to try new technologies. But as the autonomous vehicle industry has evolved and prepared for prime time, the need for a new legal framework has become clear.
While the initial groundwork preceded it by several years, the UK formally proposed the AV Act in a 2022 joint report published by the Law Commissions of England, Wales and Scotland, which noted that the arrival of autonomous vehicles created the need for an entirely new project. “a new vocabulary, new legal actors and new regulatory regimes”.
It said:
“The introduction of automated vehicles will have profound legal consequences… it requires new regulatory systems and new actors (with new responsibilities and obligations). We are therefore recommending primary legislation – a new Automated Vehicles Act – to regulate automated vehicles on roads or other public places in Britain.
Automated vehicles: joint report from the Law Commission of England and Wales and the Scottish Law Commission
Liability in the event of a self-driving car accident
The United Kingdom wanted to position itself at the forefront of the autonomous vehicle revolution, by funding various audiovisual projects and research programs around safety. The government has touted the potential safety benefits of self-driving cars, as they remove human error from the roads, while recognizing that accidents will still happen, as evidenced by reports from the United States, where self-driving cars are more firmly established. In fact, California has also become a hotbed of proposed broadcast regulation.
This is why liability is one of the essential aspects of the new British regulations: who will bear responsibility in the event of an accident? The UK clarified this point in 2022 by publishing a roadmap stating that its new legislation will make companies liable for any incidents, “meaning that a human driver will not be liable for driving-related incidents while the vehicle controls the driving.”
Each approved autonomous vehicle will have a corresponding “authorized autonomous driving entity,” which will most often be the manufacturer, but could actually be the software developer or insurance company. And this entity is responsible for the vehicle when the autonomous driving mode is activated.
The government will establish a vehicle approval system supported by a “fully independent incident investigation function”, with companies authorized to operate under the new regulations having to fulfill “ongoing obligations” to ensure the safety of their vehicles.
techcrunch
