Automated Vehicles Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Brown of Cambridge and Lord Berkeley

Committee stage
Wednesday 10th January 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, in principle I support the amendments in this group. Noble Lords who have tabled them have given us some pretty concerning views on what might happen when things go wrong. It all boils down to the fact that there needs to be proper standards, as the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, said, and proper testing of those standards in real life, as the noble Baroness, Lady Bowles, said. My worry is that government has a habit of cutting corners on these things, saying, “It’s going to be all right on the night”.

Looking at the number of cars, 4x4s and other vehicles on the road in this country, and adding the trucks which go all over Europe, if not further, one wonders what kind of standard approach will be developed. It cannot be done just by the British Government or their agencies; it has to be done on a worldwide basis. If we do not have the right standards, we will have no means of checking, when these things are tested on the road, whether they comply with the standards. We had this discussion two or three weeks ago, before Christmas, on the pedicabs Bill and batteries catching fire. It is the same issue here; we probably have the same type of batteries, although maybe just a bit bigger. There has to be a standard, not just for the batteries and other components but for how the whole thing works together. I hope the Minister can tell us how this will work in real life.

As we know, many regulations will be introduced to tell us the detail we have not had today. How many such vehicles that come here, for whatever reason, are not registered in this country? Will they be able to take part in this electric vehicle trial or will they be told that they have to have a driver? If they have to have a driver, somebody will say that that is anti-competitive, and they will take us to a European court of some description because we are keeping foreign drivers—if we can call them foreign—at a disadvantage.

All these questions need answering, as well as the fundamental question of what the backup is when there is a failure—whether it is the satellites, the GPS or whatever else. What will happen when it fails? I am sure the Minister has many good answers to these questions, which I shall enjoy listening to. If he cannot answer them, perhaps we can have another long letter—his are very helpful—explaining what might happen with all these things. We are coming to Report, so this will be our last opportunity to question him. I very much look forward to his comments and I support these amendments in this group.

[Baroness Brown of Cambridge (CB)]

My Lords, I will make a comment on Amendment 1, but perhaps also a more general comment on some of the amendments in this group and the next. I absolutely recognise that these automated driving systems need to be accepted by the public, and I see that many of the amendments look to do that by increasing the emphasis on ensuring safety. I am sure that we are all hugely sympathetic to that, so I am very sympathetic to the motivation for many of the amendments—but we need to be a bit careful. This is a new area of technology—it is still developing, of course—and there may be some unintended consequences of some of the changes that people are proposing.

In talking about this, I will briefly refer to some recent research by Konstantinos Mattas and his colleagues from the European Joint Research Centre in Ispra in Italy. For example, in Amendment 1 we are asked to include a phrase about

“substantial real testing on roads”.

I think we really need to explore the value of this. Human drivers have a frequency of fatal crashes of one every 3.4 million hours, which would imply continuous driving for 380 years. To demonstrate that automated vehicles are safer than humans, you would need to run 100 automated vehicles for 24 hours a day for 225 years. Of course, if you change the software or the hardware, you might well need to repeat tests of this length. We need to recognise the challenge of demonstrating safety by long periods of testing on roads. The vehicles will have to be significantly unsafe for a realistic period of testing to start to show up the problems.

I cannot support Amendment 1, even though I hugely sympathise with it, because it is an apparently simple ask but I do not think it is likely to deliver the benefits intended. Unfortunately, it could be counterproductive, so I think the wording of the Bill as it stands is preferable to the proposal in Amendment 1.