A future for autonomous vehicles in the UK? Lessons from the US

Description

One of the final bills passed by the outgoing Sunak government was the Automated Vehicles Act (2024), designed to make provisions for the possible rollout of autonomous vehicles in the future. If the new Starmer government is to continue this work, then lessons need to be learnt from the US, where the deployment of autonomous vehicle passenger services (AVPS) – often referred to as ‘robotaxis’ – has been on a rocky path since the first public tests of such vehicles in 2020. Here, Dr Sam Hind offers recommendations for how a new regulatory framework for autonomous vehicles might work in the UK.