On 11 February 2015 the government launched a regulatory review giving the green light for driverless car testing in the UK. It then launched driverless car projects in four British locations which are being operated by a consortia of stakeholders including insurers, software engineers, vehicle manufacturers, university researchers, and local councils.
The trial of Greenwich’s Meridian shuttle was the first trial to commence, starting on the February launch date. Visitors to the Greenwich peninsula can now use a milk-float type driverless shuttle to travel between local tourist destinations. This is the first of three trials being conducted in Greenwich by the Gateway consortium over the next two years. The second trial involves autonomous car valet parking and the focus of the third trial will be based on findings from the trials and feedback from stakeholders.
Trials in Bristol are estimated to take three years and will be run by the Venturer Consortium. The focus will be on the testing of BAE’s Bowler Wildcat off-road vehicle. This vehicle incorporates features such as sensors, including lidars and cameras, which assess the local terrain. Live trials will take place on public and private roads.
Consortium Autodrive will be operating a twin city project in Coventry and Milton Keynes. The first proposed step of the project, planned to start in autumn this year, is the testing of the Lutz Pathfinder Driverless pod, designed for use in pedestrianized areas, on footpaths in an “urban laboratory”. There are also plans to test a semi-autonomous Range Rover on the roads.
The autonomous vehicle industry is estimated to be worth £900 billion by 2025, and it is clear that this is an exciting new field with investors keen to jump on board. In March 2015, George Osborne announced that a further £100 million would be invested into driverless car research, enabling additional stakeholders to bid for funding of driverless car projects.
The government plans to review and amend domestic legislation by summer 2017, to accommodate driverless technology. In addition, the government is to liaise at an international level aiming to amend international legislation by the end of 2018.
However, the UK remains behind the US and some other European countries in the development of autonomous vehicles. At the present time, vehicle trials have not yet commenced on public roads. This reflects the government’s delay in signing off contracts for the trials and in publishing a Code of Practice, which sets out guidance for vehicle testers. The delay in signing off the contracts has been attributed to the difficulties in obtaining agreement between the numbers of parties involved in the trials. At present it is uncertain when the Code of Practice, which will enable trials to start on the roads and which was initially due to be completed in spring this year, will be unveiled. The Bristol driverless car trials were initially planned to start this April, but have now been pushed back to 2016.
Driverless car timescale
A report published in March 2015 by KMPG in conjunction with the Society of Motor Manufacturers and traders estimated a long transition period over the next 25 years towards autonomous vehicles. Some autonomous features of vehicles are already in use, such as cruise control and lane departure warning, with autonomous braking in development. Over the next 15 years a number of new autonomous and more sophisticated features are expected to become standard in vehicles, such as traffic jam assist, intersection pilot and highway pilot. It is estimated that over 75 % of vehicles will be fully autonomous by 2040.
Insurance concerns/EU legislation
The delay in developing a framework to allow autonomous vehicles to be tested on the roads may reflect public concerns regarding the liability position in the event of an accident. This issue also poses a challenge for the insurance industry. There has been a suggestion that the requirement for third party driver insurance will be abolished altogether, as vehicles become fully autonomous and drivers relinquish control of their vehicles to software. Consequently, a failure of technology may leave an injured passenger without compensation. This is worrying to many, following recent announcements that Google’s driverless cars in the US have been involved in 12 minor accidents in six years.
These fears are unlikely to be realised however, for the foreseeable future at least. At present, EU law makes provision for compulsory vehicle insurance in all member states. Under the EU Motor Insurance Directive 2009/103/EC, subscribers to compulsory motor insurance policies in all EU countries are covered for motoring throughout the EU. Article 1(4) of the Second Motor Insurance Directive also directs member states to set up a national body for providing compensation to persons injured by an untraced or uninsured vehicle.
It is very difficult to imagine EU law stepping back from compulsory insurance for as long as accidents remain possible, particularly as meaningful accidents between driverless cars are likely to be multi-vehicle, multi-occupancy events of some complexity. Also, an accident could involve a driverless vehicle and a driver-operated vehicle, or vehicles involving several different levels of autonomy. There remains a need for an a driver/tester to be able to take over control if the technology fails.
Many countries’ motor laws incorporate the Vienna Convention on Road Traffic 1968 which requires a driver to be in control of his/her vehicle at all times. This has prevented countries moving on from undertaking test drives on autonomous vehicles to marketing them for public use. However, an amendment to the United Nations Convention on Road Traffic, agreed in April 2014, allows a car to drive itself, as long as the system “can be overridden or switched off by the driver.”
The UK, has signed but not ratified the Vienna Convention. However, the requirement for a driver to be in control of his/her vehicle has been incorporated into the Road Traffic Act 1988, so this legislation would have to be amended before fully autonomous vehicles could be in public use in the UK.
Whilst the government review anticipates introducing new UK legislation to modify the Highway Code, it is expected that drivers will still be held liable in the event of accidents. This reflects the fact that in the near future at least, vehicles on the roads will be at least need to be partially controlled by a human. All the vehicles in the UK trials have the ability to be overridden or switched off by a human, and all trials currently involve a steward or tester being present. However, the government indicates that there will be a move towards manufacturers taking on a greater burden in terms of liability as telematics become more sophisticated and cars more autonomous.
Change to policies
In the meantime, driver motor insurance policies will likely change substantially. It is likely that drivers will bear the burden of ensuring that autonomous software is kept up to date. There will likely be a requirement for regular testing which will be more frequent than current MOT tests. Insurance policies will need to reflect this requirement.
In addition, the connectivity and ease of navigation of driverless cars may make car sharing more popular and will transform fleet logistics, meaning there may be a move away from individual driver policies to company fleet insurance and a new type of shared policy may need to be developed. It is also proposed by governments globally that driverless cars will be a key feature in developing “smart cities”, urban environments which use new technology to improve public transport and resident movement. Accordingly driverless buses and shuttles may become popular.
Driverless buses
Public transport operators have to date shown some reluctance to autonomous passenger vehicles, perhaps due to safety concerns and the impact on driver employment. However, there have been a number of schemes such as the CityMobil2 project in other European countries. This was set up in 2012 and is currently testing and developing driverless passenger transport in a number of European countries. For example, in Lausanne, Switzerland, driverless shuttles are operating on a six stop route linking the EPFL campus, a university of science and engineering, between 26 April 2015 and 30 June 2015. From December 2014 until April 2015, La Rochelle, France hosted a large scale demonstration of driverless buses shuttling passengers between its aquarium and tourism office. The vehicles could carry up to 12 passengers (10 with a wheelchair), ran six days a week and operated on public roads.
Road adaptations were made to ensure enough safety, traffic lights were installed in order to give priority to the vehicles at crossings and on-street parking was removed to provide enough space for the vehicle. France currently has no legislation in place to allow such vehicles to operate, but the city’s Mayor was able to take on the necessary legal responsibilities on behalf of the city. The Greenwich Meridian shuttle is designed to eventually operate as a mode of public transport which can be summoned by an app.
At a Driverless Vehicles Conference last October, Transport Minister Claire Perry highlighted potential for driverless buses to have a huge impact in rural areas, since a significant barrier to bus services here is the cost of the driver. Navigation, a significant issue in the development of driverless vehicles when considering the potential for congestion and crashes, is less of an issue for buses than cars because they travel on specific routes.
Driverless vehicles as head of damages
Driverless vehicles have the potential to increase insurance policy uptake, not least because they could extend vehicle use and community access to disabled drivers and people who are unable to drive due to medical conditions. Along with the obvious public benefits, this will provide an opportunity for insurers.
Disabled claimants may also be placed in a better position, as new technology will enable disabled people and even the visually impaired, to look forward to a future means of preserving their independence. The cost of upgrading to an automatic gearbox is already a common feature of claims but as technology advances, there will be scope for claimant lawyers to add the cost of autonomous vehicles. This will cause concern to insurers given that telematics equipment alone is estimated at present to add an additional £45,000-£65,000 to the cost of a driverless vehicle, although it is predicted that this cost increase will reduce significantly in the future to less than £3,000 by the time the cars go into mass production.
This potential seems unlikely in the near future. Courts have been quick to dismiss claims for provisional damages in respect of future developments in prosthetics, for example, despite continual and significant advancements being made. At present the judiciary are unlikely to be convinced that the implementation of this technology in the future is sufficiently certain to warrant damages. The cost of driverless vehicles alone creates a significant barrier to public uptake and Google has admitted it has yet to determine how it will make a profit on these vehicles. In any event, people disabled as a result of an accident for which they can claim damages may often have one or two carers to do the driving.
In addition, the safety implications of driverless vehicles are even more of a concern in respect of disabled passengers who may be less able to override autonomous systems, particularly whilst the liability position for the near future appears to be that the driver will be held liable in the event of an accident.
However, the position will be made clearer over the next few years once trials of autonomous vehicles have been completed and the legislative framework reviewed. New autonomous features of vehicles and their impact on disabled passengers will need to be monitored closely. Emerging technologies which aid partial autonomy and are already in existence, such as lane departure warning and adaptive cruise control, may be difficult to justify in isolation. It may be easier however to make a case for features such as blind spot monitoring or valet park assist, when claimants have relatively minor mobility problems.
It is clear that autonomous vehicles have the potential to pose exciting opportunities, as well as challenges, and lawyers will need to keep a close eye on developments in this innovative field.
Ruth Graham is a motor partner at BLM
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