Automated and Electric Vehicles Bill — House of Lords, 2018-05-09
Topic: Transportation
George Young (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, as we deal with a set of amendments dealing with handover, it is perhaps appropriate to give my noble friend a break, and I move over from the passenger seat. However, I assure the Committee that my noble friend remains in control The transferring of control of an automated vehicle between a human driver and the automated vehicle’s system will be an important factor in ascertaining how a vehicle safely and appropriately operates on UK roads. Straightaway I reassure the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, who spoke to his Amendment 21, that of course we recognise the need to put in place a proper regulatory framework to ensure both the safe deployment and safe use of automated vehicles—I will say a bit more about that in a moment It is likely that the first automated vehicles to reach the market will be able to be used in automated mode only in specific circumstances or situations, with vehicles capable of full automation arriving further into the future. My noble friend Lady Sugg said a little more about that when we debated Amendment 4. For example, she said that these circumstances could refer to vehicles that have been geo-fenced—able to operate only in a very specific, defined area—or to systems that would operate only on motorways and other high-speed roads. It is likely that these vehicles will be designed to allow handover only in these very specific circumstances: for example, from the driver to the vehicle when the vehicle enters that geo-fenced area, and from the vehicle to the driver when it leaves, in a safe manner and when appropriate to do so It is anticipated that the relevant international regulations at UNECE level will reflect these limited use cases and handover process. It is possible that these regulations will contain requirements for the vehicle to be able to detect where it is so that the system cannot be used in other situations. These standards and regulations will be likely to form the basis of the type approval process which automated vehicles, like conventional vehicles today, must pass to be sold for safe use on UK roads or in other public places. They would then be covered by Clause 1 At the moment, the powers we have are sufficient. We can use existing powers in the Road Traffic Act 1988 to revise existing, or create new, road vehicle construction and use regulations to transpose or reinforce new iterations of the global regulations as they appear. However—I repeat what we have said before during this debate—global regulations for automated vehicles have not yet been decided, and so it is not clear what changes in our domestic framework would be needed at the present time. It would be premature to ask for primary powers in a Bill that is just about automated vehicle insurance without more detailed knowledge of the ultimate design standards to which these vehicles will be held, or without knowing the outcome of the Law Commission review of the existing legal framework —which, again, my noble friend mentioned As regards handover of the driving to an automated vehicle, my noble friend Lord Borwick has proposed a different test from that in the Bill: that the handover must not be "avoidable and unreasonable". These two words would be applied conjunctively by the courts, and the result would be that a person could be found to be negligent only provided both "avoidability" and "unreasonableness" were both shown to be present. The Bill’s test makes for a lower threshold on the insurer by placing a stricter burden on the driver not to hand over in situations when it would be inappropriate to do so. While the technological and wider regulatory framework here is still very new and developing, it would be prudent to set a strict standard and relax it if appropriate once more is known. Therefore, in the Government’s view, the original text of the Bill should stand To insert "or continue" into Clause 3, as proposed in Amendment 19, would in effect legislate for the possibility of the user having some residual role in the driving task after the handover to self-driving mode is completed. When a vehicle leaves a geo-fenced area or comes off the motorway, it is anticipated that there will be a safe handover back to the driver, and the details of this will be covered by international safety standards. However, my noble friend’s amendment does not fit with the Bill’s definition of an automated vehicle, because this requires no monitoring while the vehicle is driving itself. I hope this explanation reassures him that his amendment is not necessary While, as I have already said, I am sympathetic to the intent of the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, in Amendment 21, we think that we do not need these powers, as the definition of when it is appropriate for the vehicle to drive itself will be covered elsewhere in regulations. I hope that, given that assurance, the noble Lord will feel able not to press his amendment.