Better than the average driver?
A statutory consultation has been launched by the UK Department for Transport seeking input to rules governing the driving standard expected of autonomous vehicles.
Consistent with the Automated Vehicles Act 2024 and international United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) regulations, the safety standard underpinning the SoSP is that AVs should achieve a level of safety equivalent to at least that of careful and competent human drivers.
To achieve this, the department has set out draft principles based on several behaviours it considers to be consistent with careful and competent human drivers.
These cover 5 broad themes:
- vehicle control
- hazard anticipation, perception and reaction
- obeying traffic rules
- interaction with other road users
- adaptability to road conditions
The government claims the consultation will help ensure the technology is rolled out safely and responsibly. To encourage confidence in self-driving vehicles it aims to set the safety bar so that self-driving vehicles must meet a higher standard than the average human driver.
Roads Minister Simon Lightwood said: “Safety will always come first. By setting clear expectations now and learning from real-world trials, we can support innovation, protect road users and help make Britain a world leader in this technology.”
Is ‘a higher standard than the average human driver’ good enough? To coincide with the announcement of the consultation the department published an analysis of public attitudes based on a recent research project. There was a general consensus that a standard for AVs equivalent to a ‘careful and competent’ human driver would be acceptable, although some concern about the ambiguity of the terminology. There was, though, widespread distrust of tech companies’ reliability and responsibility in consistently meeting this standard.
“On the requirements to demonstrate AV safety, participants placed the most trust in ‘independent certification and audit evidence' and ‘real-world safety outcomes data’. There was a consensus that a variety of evidence should be presented in an easily digestible format and that information directly from AV manufacturers was explicitly distrusted”, the report says.
One respondent commented, not unreasonably: "That’s the challenge – when new things like this normally come about, with companies especially, they’ll normally put all of their efforts into making it all amazing to get people hooked and then things start getting diluted over the years."
Photo of Simon Lightwood MP copyright Department for Transport