Automated and Electric Vehicles Bill

Debate between Lord Berkeley and Lord Lucas

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 9th May 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lucas]

It was not about turning railways into roads; it ends up with turning roads into railways. It is just a different method of moving people on railways.

[Lord Berkeley]

I am grateful for the noble Lord’s explanation. It depends on whether the road is as defined in Clause 1(1)(a),

“roads or in other public places”,

on whether or not it will be a railway.

I want to point out that autonomous railways are happening at the moment. The centre section of the Thameslink railway is effectively driverless. It does not go very far—from Kings Cross St Pancras to Blackfriars—but it does not need a driver. Of course, a driver is there, but that is the state of technology on the mainline railways, and the underground railways and metros have done it for a long time. Whether the same number of passengers could be taken by these autonomous pods up a railway, road or whatever, compared with a 12-car train every two minutes with people standing is a debate we can have. But I am not sure that I would support widening this Bill to get that far.

I have also been studying a few issues related to the content of the Bill, and recently met the author Christian Wolmar who has written a book, Driverless Cars: On A Road To Nowhere. I recommend that the Minister and other speakers to read it; I am not going to give it away today. Without necessarily supporting what he says, there are issues relating to the human reaction to automation that are quite useful to study, including how close a vehicle can get to the one in front, and all the things we spoke about on Second Reading, which I shall not repeat today. It may take rather longer than some noble Lords think for all this to come about. We are certainly right to debate it now and to concentrate on common standards.

I certainly support my noble friend Lord Tunnicliffe. I think he was speaking to Amendment 8, which I did not know was in this group, but he made a good speech and I certainly support it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Berkeley]

My Lords, I want to speak briefly to Amendment 35. Having a definition of “road”, as suggested by the noble Lord, Lord Borwick, is essential. I know there are lots of different definitions of roads within the various road traffic Acts, but I happened to come across a case a few years ago where somebody who was driving a 4x4 on a road which did not appear to be a road within the definition of the road traffic Acts was arrested and charged with drink-driving. He was convicted in the end and it is quite clear, which I did not understand before, that that offence can occur anywhere—in a field, a factory, or anywhere else—because it is not particularly a road traffic offence: it is being drunk in charge of a vehicle. I do not know whether that will be reflected when we get to who is in charge of these vehicles, but it demonstrates the importance of having a definition of “road” where such legislation will apply.

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, I think there is a difficulty with what my noble friend’s Amendment 4 proposes. There is no reason to suppose that we will not have vehicles that are dual-capable—capable of being driven by people and driven autonomously—maybe as part of the evolution to a fully autonomous system. I do not suspect that a farmer will want their Land Rover to be autonomous for a long time in the future, except when it is on a roadway and switching between two modes may become quite important. Therefore, a vehicle that is capable of switching between the two modes, and is therefore not always autonomous, will be an important part of the evolution to autonomous vehicles.

I also suspect that once a vehicle is autonomous, it will not ever be truly not in someone’s charge. If you have a set of vehicles which are essentially public vehicles—small buses, which are just picked up on the street and you take one to wherever you are going—some kind of alarm system will be necessary. There will probably be some oversight in case of a known problem: you will want to say, “Right, all vehicles within a particular radius shall slow down or stop because there appears to be some problem developing here”. Defining who is in charge of a vehicle where those capabilities exist will be quite problematic. This comes back to my wanting the Government to give themselves the flexibility to adapt the regulations as circumstances change, our knowledge improves and systems move.

The picture the Government paint of a Bill every year is just not feasible: government does not work that way. This sort of backwater gets a Bill every four years if we are lucky. We absolutely have to reckon that this Bill has to last the rest of this Parliament and probably the first year or two of the next. There is not the space in a Government’s life for off-centre Bills on a regular basis. The Bill is underpowered for the mission it sets out to achieve.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Berkeley]

My Lords, I will make what I hope is a helpful suggestion to my noble friend in connection with Amendment 21. The most appropriate authority to make these regulations would be the Office of Rail and Road. It is responsible for safety on the railway; it should be responsible for road safety, but we have not got there yet. Maybe the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, would support me on that one. However, I hope that is a helpful suggestion.

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, given Network Rail’s safety record over the last 10 years, I would absolutely support that recommendation.

Automated and Electric Vehicles Bill

Debate between Lord Berkeley and Lord Lucas

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Wednesday 9th May 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, these are interesting amendments. When my noble friend Lord Tunnicliffe was speaking to Amendment 25 and mentioned the word “victim”, I began to think, “Well, who is a victim? Can a car be a victim, or only a person?” I think it is too late tonight to start a long debate on that, but perhaps the Minister could think about that some time.

I turn to Amendments 23 and 28. My worry about Amendment 23 is: what happens if the manufacturer has gone bust? In other words, the manufacturer does not actually have to be the person who supplies updates; it can be anyone. My gut feeling is that my noble friend Lord Tunnicliffe’s Amendment 28 is better because it just says that the vehicle may not be operated unless the application software relating to the vehicle’s automated function is up to date. I think that would cover what Amendment 23 covers but in a better way.

What nobody has mentioned tonight, which the noble Baroness touched on, is what happens if the software does not work and you are stuck on a motorway or in a one-way street and cannot move the car? Again, I think that is a debate for another day, but I hope the Minister will have some response to the points made by many noble Lords, particularly about who updates the software.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I entirely agree with my noble friend Lord Borwick that software updates should be the responsibility of the manufacturer. They are capable of updating it, and of making it automatic that it is updated. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, that systems need to be better than they are at the moment. I note that my iPhone issued by this House is automatically updated with software. About two weeks ago it deleted all my telephone contacts and it resists all efforts by all our excellent people in this House to restore it to normality, because Apple takes no responsibility for this, of course. It just produces the update and there is no recourse to make the thing work properly.

In the case of automated vehicles we absolutely need to have recourse to the manufacturers, and they need to know that that is where liability for these things rests. It is their responsibility to make sure that their fleet of vehicles on the roads is up to date and functioning as expected. This reflects back into other aspects of the Bill that we have already discussed, as to who should be allowed to make modifications and how the whole fleet of autonomous vehicles should communicate with each other.

I am also happy with Amendment 25; it is an excellent thing. I would only point out in the drafting of Amendment 28 that it refers to “public roads” whereas the Bill refers to “public spaces”. With reference to a conversation I had earlier with the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, that presumably includes the airspace above public spaces, so the Bill includes your future Amazon drone wandering along six feet above the pavement to drop your parcel over your gate. I see nothing in the Bill that excludes airborne vehicles—or indeed waterborne vehicles—so I presume that both are included in that definition of public spaces. I do not know which definition of public spaces is being referred to. The ones I can find in legislation are pretty vague and not really related to this subject, but I would assume that at the same time as thinking we are dealing with road vehicles, we are also dealing with ones that could be airborne—at least within reasonable reach of the ground.