I wish to provide the House with an update on further steps the Government are taking to implement the Automated Vehicles Act 2024 and kickstart economic growth. Self-driving vehicles have the potential to increase opportunities and break down barriers for how people and goods move around the country, making transport safer, greener, and more reliable. Strengthening road safety, improving accessibility, and ensuring safeguarding remain central to this vision.
The AV Act delivers one of the most comprehensive legal frameworks of its kind, with safety at its core. It sets out clear legal responsibilities, establishes a safety framework and creates the required regulatory powers. This includes measures designed to protect all road users—pedestrians, cyclists, disabled people, and vulnerable groups—through a consistent, evidence-based safety framework.
The AV Act implementation programme supports the Government-wide programme of work using artificial intelligence to deliver the plan for change, with AVs providing a core example of how AI could bring tangible benefits to the public. This technology has the potential to enable safer journeys, improve access to essential services, and enhance independence for people with accessibility needs.
Today, we have published an ambitious call for evidence on developing the AV regulatory framework. This call for evidence will help inform secondary legislation, guidance and policy development, ensuring the AV regulatory framework remains proportionate, forward-looking and responsive to emerging technologies while upholding strong safeguards for public safety, data protection, and responsible operation.
The call for evidence is split into two main chapters: “getting AVs on the road” and “once AVs are on the road”.
Chapter 1 seeks further evidence relating to:
Vehicle type approval: the assessment of whether the vehicle is technically safe before it is allowed on to the GB market; this is closely linked to the ongoing work at the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe to develop automated driving systems regulations.
Authorisation: the new process of authorising a self-driving vehicle for use on GB roads without a driver, allowing legal responsibilities to shift to the authorised self-driving entity when the vehicle is driving itself.
User-in-charge: if a self-driving feature requires a responsible human inside the vehicle, that human is the driver while the feature is disengaged, and becomes a UIC when the self-driving feature is engaged. The UIC will not be responsible for the way the self-driving vehicle drives when the feature is engaged.
Transition demands: a time-bound demand for the UIC to take control of the vehicle when a self-driving vehicle needs to safely transfer control to a human driver.
Operator licensing: the use of vehicles with self-driving features that do not require a human driver to be present while active in vehicles which may have no human on board at all.
Insurance: AVs must be insured to legally drive on our roads, but motor insurance for AVs will be different from that for conventional vehicles. As a result, insurers will need timestamp data recorded by the vehicle, showing if the system was active, to determine liabilities.
Chapter 2 seeks further evidence relating to:
In-use regulation: ongoing monitoring to confirm that vehicles continue to meet the self-driving test requirements, and in particular, the requirement to be able to safely and legally drive themselves once on the road. In-use regulation will also monitor where authorisation requirements and operator licensing requirements continue to be complied with.
Sanctions: a new set of civil and regulatory sanctions available to Government. They include compliance notices, redress notices and fines as well as variation, suspension or withdrawal of an authorisation or a licence.
Incident investigation: a process for no-blame incident investigation involving AVs, similar to existing aviation and rail investigation branches, allowing for continuous improvement based on real-world evidence
Cyber-security: appropriate cyber-security controls must be in place throughout the vehicles service life; this extends to the security of the operation centre and includes cyber, personnel and physical security.
Questions relating to data, costs and benefits appear throughout the call for evidence, and there are stand-alone sections on accessibility and environmental impacts. While the focus of the call for evidence is on the safety framework, we are particularly mindful of potential accessibility benefits and so have included accessibility considerations.
We seek views from a broad range of respondents, including road users, industry, academics, road-safety experts, accessibility specialists, first responders, trade unions, and the wider public. Their insights will help ensure that as AV technologies develop, they do so in ways that strengthen safety, widen access, and safeguard the public.
A copy of this publication will be placed in the Library of each House and published on gov.uk.
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