Policy development
The Law Commissions’ review of the law relating to automated vehicles involved three rounds of consultation between November 2018 and December 2020, involving over 350 meetings with individuals and organisations, and analysis of over 400 written responses. The Law Commissions published their report Automated Vehicles: joint report with 75 recommendations in January 2022. 1
	The Government’s response to the recommendations was published in the Connected and Automated Mobility 2025: Realising the benefits of self-driving vehicles in the UK (CAM 2025) in August 2022. 2 Based on the Law Commissions’ recommendations, CAM 2025 committed to set out a legal and safety framework to provide clarity of responsibility for self-driving vehicles and to put in place new safety requirements. The framework applies to vehicle systems that are capable of driving a vehicle, for some or all of a journey, with no human input. Such systems are considered ‘self-driving’, and legal responsibilities change. This technology is distinct from technology that supports a driver (driver assistance technology), where the driver remains responsible at all times. The Law Commissions recommended that it should be a criminal offence to market a vehicle as self-driving if it does not meet the legal definition.
	As recommended by the Law Commissions, CAM 2025 identifies new legal entities responsible for the safety of self-driving systems and creates a new legal status for a driver who has handed control of a vehicle to a self-driving system. It also sets out details of a new safety framework for self-driving vehicles on roads in Great Britain.
	The safety framework includes a high-level non-statutory safety ambition which aims to provide a focus for Government and industry as self-driving vehicles are developed and deployed, and to provide a publicly-accessible aim to support public acceptance. A set of National Safety Principles, referred to as a Statement of Safety Principles in the Act, must set out further detail of the safety expectations for self-driving vehicles and to which the Secretary of State is required to have regard when assessing whether a vehicle is able to drive itself safely and legally. The Statement of Safety Principles are required to be framed with a view to securing the safety ambition that authorised automated vehicles will achieve a level of safety equivalent to, or higher than, that of careful and competent human drivers.
	Vehicles with automated systems will be subject to detailed technical assessment and approval for the purposes of safety and cyber-security using the well-established Vehicle Type Approval process. Amendments to the approval process can be made where necessary to account for new automated technologies. A vehicle with automated technology may be put forward for authorisation, which is the process by which a system will be assessed as self-driving. If assessed as self-driving, authorisation identifies the organisation responsible for the system.
	If an authorised self-driving system operates without a responsible individual inside at any point, it requires a licensed operator to oversee the service. If the service carries passengers, it requires a permit for automated passenger services or license to do so under taxi, private hire or public service vehicle laws.
	An in-use regulatory scheme holds those responsible for self-driving systems to account while the systems are in use, and sanctions and penalties apply if the regulated bodies fail to meet their obligations. No-blame safety investigations by inspectors of automated vehicle incidents make recommendations to inform and shape the ongoing safe development and deployment of self-driving vehicles.
	In addition to the Law Commission’s recommendations, the Act enables information about traffic regulation orders (TROs) to be made available digitally and in a common format for use in self-driving vehicles and other systems that facilitate driving vehicles on a road. The data, which includes, for example, speed limits, road closures and restrictions, location and times of use of bus lanes and parking bays can then be used to create a digital map of the road network which support the safe operation of self-driving vehicles. The proposal for digital TROs was consulted on in 2022. 3
	The following paragraphs provide further detail on the policy background, following the structure of the Act.