What the UK’s Automated Vehicles Act really means

The Automated Vehicles Act squeaked through parliament just before the election. Nicole Kobie explains what the industry thinks about it

The UK Government has just passed laws laying out who is responsible for driverless car accidents, how to market the vehicles and more. Its hope? That such proactive regulation will spark trials akin to those seen in San Francisco and other American cities.

The Automated Vehicles Act slipped through just before the current government called a surprise election, receiving Royal Assent and becoming law two days before parliament was shut down. That quick work helped to keep the driverless framework on track, noted Ben Loewenstein, Senior Manager for European Policy and Government Affairs at Alphabet-owned Waymo, speaking in a panel at the Move conference in London last week.

“The Bill becoming an Act in the UK was a significant step forward,” he said. “We managed to get an automated vehicles act get Royal Assent two days before an election was called — had that not happened, we might have been back to square one under a new government.” (While that is technically true, the Act is widely considered to have cross-party support.)

What does the Automated Vehicles Act include?

The Act defines key terms including what it means to be autonomous (the car is in control, and the riders need not pay attention), the “authorised self-driving entity” (ASDE) that is legally responsible for the vehicle, and enables the use of “no user in charge” cars, outlining who is responsible in case of an incident.

“It’s very much about ascribing responsibility and liability for the self-driving elements,” said  Jessica Uguccioni, head of CAM Adoption Strategy for CCAV at the Department for Transport, in a panel at Move. “It looks at the companies that are putting the vehicles on the road as well as protecting the users and making sure that they’re not held responsible for how the vehicle drives in situations where it might not be fair to do so.”

Loewenstein noted that the Act lays out “how safe is safe enough”, and how permits will work, including who will manage them. “These are all questions that we as an industry need to have answers to before frankly we can make an investment decision, and say yes this is how we would go to market in the UK,” he said.

The Act also introduces a framework for policing such vehicles, including giving police the right to seize driverless cars and creating the new job role of “automated vehicle incident inspectors”.

Implications for marketing driverless cars

One intriguing aspect of the Act is new laws around marketing: it is illegal to imply full self-driving capabilities when in fact people must pay attention. Companies must use the correct terminology… although that is still to be decided. Take note, Tesla. “The Law Commission suggested things like self-driving, driving itself, driverless — those kinds of words should be reserved to only vehicles registered and certified as driving themselves,” Uguccioni said.

Beyond words, the Act also introduces a new offence of mismarketing driverless technologies, in particular the level of attention required by the human user. “That’s designed to address… adverts where people might be looking out the window or texting or other things which would be really dangerous unless the vehicle was one that was actually driving itself and there was no need for any human intervention,” says Uguccioni.

The passing of the Act doesn’t mean driverless cars can suddenly hit British roads — indeed, Loewenstein noted that the EU has had a Type Approval framework for two years, and no company has yet to successfully apply.

Instead, much more work remains. The Act is seen as a framework on which to hang future legislation, with further safety principles set for a consultation next year and regulations around licensing and so on still to be developed. “There’s also a lot of powers for secondary legislation in the Act itself, which enable us to set requirements in respect of the authorisation of vehicles,” said Uguccioni.

Indeed, Uguccioni said that though this is a UK Act, much of the work will include European and UN regulators, to ensure consistency.

What does the Government say?

The bill received Royal Assent at the end of May, and the UK Government said it could enable driverless cars to be on British roads within two years — though, of course, we’re set to have a new government within two weeks. The Government believes that driverless technologies, led by British companies Oxa and Wayve, could be worth up to £42 billion and create 38,000 jobs by 2035.

At the time, Transport Secretary Mark Harper called the new set of laws a “milestone moment for our self-driving industry”, inexplicably adding that “this doesn’t take away people’s ability to choose to drive themselves” — a concern no one has yet, given that cars with full automation aren’t exactly widely available.

The government said the act was the “most comprehensive legal framework of its kind worldwide,” in part because it takes in the wider industry, including insurers, by considering liability and responsibility in case of incidents.

Industry: regulate now please

Lisa Johnson, Vice President at Starship Technologies, raised a concern specific to her company’s small autonomous delivery robots: the legislation doesn’t address technologies like Starship as they don’t operate on roads.

“It’s one of our big frustrations, that we don’t actually always fit into the frameworks that are developed because we’re not on roads, we’re on pavements with small wheels and we can’t have a safety driver,” she noted. There’s more to autonomous vehicles than cars and robotaxis, after all.

Johnson said she’d prefer to see regulation sooner rather than later, despite Starship being the only active player in the market. That’s because the lack of regulation could enable a rival to enter the market in an unsafe or irresponsible way, damaging social acceptance. “There’s no regulations to be a barrier to bad actors,” she said. “We want it for that reason but we also want clarity and consistency in terms.”

Waymo’s Lowenstein suggested that the clock was ticking when it comes to regulation. Asked why Waymo didn’t yet operate in Europe or the UK, he said the obvious answer was regulation — or the lack thereof. “We have an AV Bill, but it’s still not fully legal to operate a service like the one we have in the US,” he said, adding that getting local car makers on board was also key, as Waymo doesn’t manufacture the vehicles itself.

The new law means driverless cars may soon be on the road in the UK — assuming the technology being developed proves successful, of course, and that remains to be seen. But even then, this is only the first step for regulators, and there will be many more before the law is ready to welcome automation to our roads.