Skip to main content

SAE Level 3 is not 'real autonomy', says Axa Insurance

Autonomy at SAE Level 3 is just very good driver assistance, said David Williams, managing director, underwriting and technical services at Axa Insurance.
By Ben Spencer January 29, 2020 Read time: 1 min
Autonomous self-driving driverless vehicle with radar driving on the road (source: ID 57148848 © Hong Li | Dreamstime.com)

Speaking at 'Westminster Energy, Environment & Transport Forum policy conference Intelligent and autonomous transport in the UK – next steps for innovation, infrastructure and regulation', Williams expressed concerns on “the messages being sent to people on the roads”.

“If you're telling them that level 3 is autonomous; they will do things that they shouldn't and they won't be ready to take back control,” he added.

Williams also emphasised the need to understand the technology better because “pricing will focus more on the vehicle than the individual”.

“If you've got a safer vehicle, we want to offer you a lower price, but all these things are currently fitted as optional extras,” he continued. “When you go onto a price comparison website, we don’t know what's fitted to your vehicle so we need to understand this so we can reward the customer appropriately.”

“Secondly, over the air updates may mean that the vehicle you drive off the forecourt may not have the capability of the vehicle you have in a year's time, so we need to understand that as well,” he concluded.

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • Foundation funds research for informed campaigning
    April 29, 2015
    ITS International talks to Professor Stephen Glaister, director of the transport research and lobbying organisation, the RAC Foundation. It is through the eyes of an economist that Professor Stephen Glaister, emeritus professor of transport and infrastructure at Imperial College London and director of the RAC Foundation, views current and future transport problems. Having spent 30 years at the London School of Economics and another 10 at Imperial, the move to the RAC Foundation was a radical departure from
  • Sampo Hietanen’s mobility mission
    June 17, 2016
    For a decade Sampo Hietanen harboured a vision of an alternative form of mobility, now as CEO of MaaS Finland he is putting theory into practice. Sampo Hietanen has become the embodiment of Mobility as a Service (MaaS) – a concept he created 10 years ago while working for Finnish civil engineering giant Destia. “I had been working with the mobile sector on traffic information and started thinking what will happen when this becomes bigger,” he says.
  • Overture is open to the bigger picture
    June 18, 2024
    Four of the biggest players in the world of mapping have joined forces to create easy-to-use, interoperable open data that will power the next generation of maps. Kevin Borras talks collaborative interoperability with Overture Map Foundation’s Marc Prioleau and TomTom’s Willem Strijbosch
  • Ken Leonard talks to ITS International
    August 21, 2014
    Ken Leonard, director of the USDOT’s ITS Joint Program office made time in his schedule during the Helsinki Congress to speak to ITS International. It has been 18 months since Ken Leonard took over as the director of the Intelligent Transportation Systems Joint Program Office at the US Department of Transportation. With 30 years of technical experience behind him, to say he is enjoying the challenge would be to put it mildly: “It is incredibly exciting to be working in intelligent transportation systems, th