Richard Burden – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Transport

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Richard Burden on 2016-07-11.

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, whether his Department plans to include provisions in the Modern Transport Bill to (a) develop a licensing regime for the sale of safe driverless vehicles and (b) establish regulations for driverless vehicles in the testing phase.

Mr Robert Goodwill

At this stage, we have not developed plans for changes to primary road traffic legislation other than relating to motor vehicle insurance for automated vehicles. We have also announced plans to change the Highway Code and regulations to support the safe use of advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS). The Centre for Connected and Autonomous Vehicles launched a consultation on these issues on 11 July.

We will consider further legislative, regulatory, and guidance changes as ADAS and automated vehicles continue to develop and reach the market, so that people and businesses can safely take advantage of the benefits that they offer.

We do not consider that legislative change is needed to facilitate testing of automated vehicle technologies; testing of automated vehicle technologies can be carried out on any UK road as long as carried out in line with UK traffic laws and guidance – further details are set out in the Code of practice for testing of automated vehicle technologies – https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/automated-vehicle-technologies-testing-code-of-practice.

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