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smarterUK has responded to the House of Lords Science and Technology Select Committee Inquiry on Autonomous Vehicles. 

This inquiry examines whether the actions taken by the Government are appropriate, considering both the scale of economic opportunity and the potential public good benefits. The inquiry will collect evidence on the potential uses and benefits of autonomous vehicles. It will look at the transition path and the co-existence of autonomous and conventional road vehicles. Finally, it will consider connectivity and interactions with physical and digital infrastructure.

The deployment of driverless vehicles on UK roads raises many questions from who would be legally responsible in the case of accident to whether the UK is making sufficient preparations to infrastructure and regulation development. There are also questions around public attitudes to the technology and how a rollout would be managed to account for a mix of semi-autonomous, fully autonomous and legacy ‘dumb’ vehicles making use of highways for simultaneously.

Our written evidence builds upon a number of the points raised previously in written evidence to the Centre for Connected and Autonomous Vehicles on the UK testing ecosystem for CAVs.

smarterUK’s top-level points to the Committee were:

• The impact of Connected and Autonomous Vehicles (CAVs) is hard to fully understand. They will have a disruptive impact across a range of sectors as diverse as agriculture, enterprise, social care, insurance, public transport, and the structure of cities, if consumer adoption of Mobility-As-A-Service results in greater utilisation of vehicles and a reduced need for parking outside offices or shopping and entertainment facilities. More needs to be done to understand the negative impact autonomous vehicles and accompany service models will have on those whose employment is linked to current forms of vehicle ownership and use.
• A comprehensive and stringent testing environment is of critical importance. It will serve to ensure both that CAVs are as safe as possible, including from cyber-attack where an end-to-end systems approach needs to be taken to minimise and protect attack vectors to critical systems, and to build the public’s trust in them, without which the UK market will stall.
• The UK road network has deficiencies in the connectivity and general infrastructure required to support both autonomous vehicles and driving. Significant differences between rural and urban areas, including the availability of data, will impact the availability of services and potentially limit the effectiveness of vehicles. More needs to be done to understand the impact of these differences and appropriate action must be taken early to address challenges.
• It is critically important to build and retain public trust in it in order to drive widespread adoption. Focusing simply on the benefits of increased safety, lifestyle enhancements or economic efficiencies will not give autonomous vehicles the required traction unless they fit within the public’s idea of what they should be like to drive on. 
• Universally agreed minimum and maximum technical requirements for different levels of advanced driver assistance systems and automated driving systems. Alongside universally agreed and easily understood consumer-friendly definitions will encourage a smoother transition to extensive deployment.
• Government will need to support the supply chain in understanding the implications of CAV technology for data protection, clearly addressing complex questions around what is classed as personal data and where liability sits.

TECHUK RESPONSE TO LORDS INQUIRY ON AUTONOMOUS VEHICLES (PDF)