Reed Mobility response to Automated Vehicles Bill consultation

The Automated Vehicles Bill has been flying through the various stages of the parliamentary process towards Royal assent. This is great news as it indicates strong motivation and support for this regulatory framework to enable the commercial deployment of self driving vehicles.

Sadly this meant that the committee stage was completed less than two weeks after the opening of a public consultation on the bill. Consequently, my written feedback arrived too late to influence the deliberations of the Bill committee - but that doesn’t mean I can’t share it here…

See a pdf of my written evidence here:

My key concerns are around:

• what it means for an AV to be careful and competent (and the potential value of Digital Commentary Driving in demonstrating that);

• what it means for an AV to improve road safety (fairly, equitably and explainably);

• how transition demands can be managed safely (and what to do if they are not) and

• how self-driving features will be marketed if the top-of-the-range model of a particular vehicle is capable of automated driving but the base model has ADAS that a user might perceived to be self-driving based on the marketing of the premium version.

Whilst I may have missed the chance to feed in to the consultation, I’m sure there will be lots to work on once we get into the development of secondary legislation and, critically, the publication of the Statement of Safety Principles, introduced in the scoping notes to the Bill. Stay tuned!