Skip to main content

C/AV integration is ‘legislative nightmare’, warns ITS UK president

The integration of connected and autonomous vehicles (C/AV) into existing road systems “is going to be a legislative nightmare”, warned a former UK government transport minister. Giving the keynote speech at this week’s MaaSMarket conference in London, ITS UK president Steven Norris, said: “Don’t underestimate the legislative challenges – which are infinitely more complex than the technical ones. I can’t think of any development in human history which has posed so many legislative questions.” Chief among
February 23, 2018 Read time: 2 mins

The integration of connected and autonomous vehicles (C/AV) into existing road systems “is going to be a legislative nightmare”, warned a former UK government transport minister. Giving the keynote speech at this week’s MaaSMarket conference in London, ITS UK president Steven Norris, said: “Don’t underestimate the legislative challenges – which are infinitely more complex than the technical ones. I can’t think of any development in human history which has posed so many legislative questions.” Chief among these were at what point - and how - C/AV should be integrated into the ‘driver-driven’ fleet. “I would hate to be in the position of a legislature that had to make that choice,” Norris suggested. He said other problems include: how C/AV will fit in with pedestrians and cyclists in urban areas; who would be liable for damages in accidents involving C/AVs; how autonomous vehicles would be programmed to prioritise who to save – for example, a pedestrian child, another road user or the passenger – in the event of a collision; plus when ‘driven’ vehicles would be prohibited from the streets. “I don’t think we are even close to deciding what the parameters of the debate are, let alone coming to any conclusions,” he said. Norris, who was a transport minister in the Conservative government of the early 1990s, also predicted that answers will not come quickly, pointing to the delay in expanding the UK’s airport capacity. “Here’s my tip,” he said to the MaaSMarket audience. “We’ve known we’ve needed an additional runway for 35 years – we still haven’t decided where it’s going to be. Some of you are going to get very, very, very old before all the legal questions around C/AV are even addressed.”

Related Content

  • May 8, 2020
    Magway plots retail delivery revolution

    While most of the debate around hyperloop focuses on the potential for passenger traffic, technology firms are also exercised about how to respond to the fast-changing nature of the retail sector.

    One such company is the UK-based start-up Magway, co-founded in 2017 by former South African mining engineer Rupert Cruise and retail and technology consultant Phill Davies.

    In short, Magway moves goods from warehouses to distribution centres – or to new residential or commercial hubs - through small, high-density polyethylene pipes in pods driven by linear synchronous motors.

  • May 2, 2018
    Interview: Jarrett Walker, author of Human Transit
    Elon Musk has called him a ‘sanctimonious idiot’ but public transit expert Jarrett Walker tells Andrew Stone that more data and smarter cars aren't the answer to mass mobility...
  • December 2, 2016
    Smarter mapping makes for more informed decisions
    Following his keynote presentation at the 2016 ITS World Congress in Melbourne, ITS International caught up with Esri founder Jack Dangermond. It is getting close to half a century ago that Jack Dangermond and his wife Laura founded the Environmental Research Systems Institute – known today as Esri - of which he remains president.
  • February 20, 2019
    MaaS Market London conference attracts global experts
    A plethora of global mobility experts is heading for ITS International’s 2019 MaaS Market Conference, reflecting the increasing pace of Mobility as a Service deployment. Colin Sowman reports Mobility as a Service (MaaS) cannot exist without the digitisation of transport services - and digitisation is without doubt the biggest challenge the transport sector has ever faced. It will create more changes over the next five to 10 years than the transport sector has seen in the past 100 - and there will be winn