Stephanie Pywell ponders some of the liability dilemmas facing UK law-makers at the dawn of the age of driverless cars
The issue of driverless cars—more properly, autonomous vehicles (AVs)—is all around us. On 2 October 2015, Lucy McCormick’s article in NLJ outlined some of the provisions of the UK government’s code for testing AVs in public places (see “Drive me (in the) wild”, 165 NLJ 7670, p 7). On 14 February 2016, a Google-controlled Lexus AV carrying a test-driver was involved in a collision with a bus in Santa Clara, California. On 16 March, the full text of the Budget (though not the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s speech) stated that, “by 2017” (a maximum of 19 months’ time) trials of driverless cars and “truck platooning”—which means convoys of up to 10 autonomous 44-tonne lorries, with a driver in only the leading vehicle—will take place on the UK’s “strategic road network”.
Last Wednesday, the Queen’s Speech confirmed the government’s intention for the UK to be “at the forefront of technology for new forms of transport,
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