In addition to the recent plan to widely promote the use of autonomous vehicles in 2025, the British government also plans toThrough legislationWhen an accident or casualty occurs during the operation of an enhanced autonomous vehicle, the human driver in the vehicle will not be held responsible if he or she does not intervene in any manual operation. Instead, the vehicle manufacturer will be responsible.
This legislation was drafted this year by the Law Commission of England and Wales and the Law Commission of EnglandSubmission, believes that if an autonomous vehicle speeds, runs a red light, or causes a traffic accident due to system misjudgment, the responsibility should not be borne by the human driver, but by the industry that develops autonomous driving technology and the car manufacturers that manufacture autonomous driving vehicles.
However, human drivers still need to keep an eye on the road ahead at all times and refrain from doing anything that affects autonomous driving. They are also responsible for accidents caused while driving manually, or for not wearing seat belts or applying for vehicle insurance.
If this legislation is formally passed, it will set a precedent in the global region.
Governments around the world have yet to define liability for negligence when autonomous vehicles are operating on roads. This is due to the difficulty in clarifying whether an accident was caused by human error or a misjudgment by the autonomous system. In most cases, the consensus is that human drivers should diligently verify the vehicle's operating conditions, rather than fully trusting the autonomous system.
However, the British government believes that the companies responsible for designing and manufacturing self-driving vehicles should also be held responsible. The reason is that human drivers are confident in letting the vehicles operate automatically is mostly because the companies have over-promoted the self-driving functions. At the same time, it is also believed that if the responsibility is always placed on human drivers, the development of self-driving technology will be relatively limited.
In addition to plans to ensure that human drivers are exempt from liability in accidents caused by autonomous driving technology, the British government currently plans to invest 1 million pounds to promote the development of autonomous driving technology and allocate an additional 3400 million pounds for research use to promote new laws and safety practices to ensure the smooth development of autonomous driving technology applications.
At the same time, the British government also expects to create 38000 new jobs by expanding the development of autonomous driving technology, and also expects to lay out greater market development opportunities through the development of autonomous driving technology.
