Connected autonomous vehicles: What next for the UK?
Bhavin Makwana reflects on the state of Connected and Automated Mobility in the UK, exploring how regulation, safety, resilience and public trust will shape the deployment of automated vehicles over the next decade.
Last week I featured on a panel at the Warwick Manufacturing Group (WMG) workshop on Connected and Automated Mobility (CAM), it was a useful opportunity to reflect on where the UK is with both the regulation and deployment of autonomous vehicles (AV).
The Automated Vehicles Act received royal assent in 2024 and is undergoing further revisions for secondary legislation that is due in late 2027. A key aspect within the bill – to remove the safety driver currently required by law and the promise of an interim regulatory regime to allow earlier removal for passenger services that is coming this spring – has enabled automated ride-hailing (‘robotaxi’) organisations such as Waymo to announce that they will enter into the London market to media fanfare.
AVs have multiple uses in addition to the headline grabbing self-driving cabs. CAM could revolutionise transit and logistics on private and commercial land, for example as part of airport ground operations. They could change mass public transit by serving underserved communities and routes by improving services at unsociable hours. In terms of freight CAM can offer first and last mile delivery solutions that suffer from driver shortages.
The potential benefits are huge but to grasp the opportunities we need to ensure a robust approach to implementation.
Safety and technical resilience: According to the UK Department for Transport, 88% of road traffic collisions have human error as a contributory factor. Safety benefits remain at the heart of the benefits of AV. CAM services also need to be designed with a level of technical resilience so that if a component fails a subsystem will take over to prevent harm or perform a minimal response manoeuvre (MRM).
Cyber security: AV systems gather large amounts of data and connect widely with other components; this connectivity needs to be monitored and protected with many states now implementing data sovereignty legislation.
Geopolitical uncertainty: A common thread across all industries, CAM is vulnerable to shocks to global supply chains both for factory components, software elements and server access.
On top of this we need to design a way to safely integrate CAM into a system that will include pedestrians, cyclists and conventional motorists. We need to build public trust in CAM, navigating the high culpability placed on machine errors. Finally, we must ensure that CAM is user friendly so that prospective passengers are confident to travel without discouraging active travel.
One way to improve this process is to have technical expertise integrated at the top level of legislative decision-making and to closely collaborate with industry experts. The Autonomous Vehicle Act is still under scrutiny and complex issues of authorisation and safety assurance (how will the safety of a system be measured) are still to be resolved.
There are many potential forks in the road before we see robotaxis or AV busses on our streets, but the potential for CAM to improve transit across the board is undeniable. I’m a strong believer that truly revolutionary solutions succeed because they give us convenient options (think about smartphones and what they have enabled us to do), CAM is well placed to win over the public with the right legislation and implementation, with solutions serving a real need.
If you’d like to discuss Connected and Automated Mobility and what it could mean for future transport systems, contact Bhavin Makwana.
