Feature Hands off
The UK’s Automated Vehicles Act passed this year, clearing the way for driverless cars to hit the road in 2026. Jack Carfrae unpacks the detail.
ou do not have to look far to see autonomous vehicles (AVs) at work. Trucks pilot themselves along the roads around Nissan’s Sunderland factory, unmanned forklifts buzz through more than a few of the world’s warehouses, and driverless buses wind their way through Oxford.
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The rules are comparatively loose for off- highway AVs, but those that creep onto the road must be manned by a person and will be there purely on a trial basis. There is even government guidance on how to do it – a 2019 document called Code of Practice: automated vehicle trialling. That is due to change in 2026, when AVs are expected to hit the highway without a human at
22 | November/December 2024 |
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the wheel. The Automated Vehicles Act passed in May and has laid the legal groundwork to permit the first driverless vehicles on public roads. It is impossible to ignore the commercial motivation behind the move, as the government said the self-driving vehicle sector generated £475m of investment and created 1,500 new jobs between 2018 and 2022. It estimates the home- grown industry will be worth up to £42bn and create 38,000 jobs by 2035.
Crucially, though, the AV Act addresses the thorny issue of responsibility in an accident. “While their vehicle is in self-driving mode, they [drivers] will not be held responsible for how the vehicle drives,” says the government.
“The Law Commission introduced this whole new set of vocabulary, which put daylight between driver support technologies like lane assist and adaptive cruise control, and true driverless vehicles,” explains Jonathan Butler, partner and head of automotive at law firm Geldards and a board member of the Vehicle Remarketing Association.
“It was aimed, really, at creating a paradigm shift, in moving responsibility for road safety from drivers of automated vehicles to manufacturers or software providers.”
A big part of that that is a trio of new terms to legally define an AV’s status and exactly what it is doing. The first is Authorised Self-Driving Entity (ASDE), which refers to the manufacturer
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