Automated and Electric Vehicles Bill

Debate between Clive Efford and Lord Swire

2nd reading: House of Commons & Ways and Means resolution: House of Commons
Monday 23rd October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

I welcome the Bill. I will concentrate my remarks on the issues surrounding automated vehicles, but I support all the points that have been made about electric vehicles, particularly those regarding compatibility and infrastructure. We do not want people to be inconvenienced by different connectors and things like that. That is an obvious point to make, but one that has been overlooked in the past and that was well made today. Clearly, it is a technology for which the time has come. The batteries have a longer life and the vehicles can now travel further as a consequence. The environmental benefits are obvious and the cost of the vehicles is starting to come down, making them much more accessible, so I very much support that element of the Bill.

One of the impact assessments that accompanies the Bill refers to “connected and automated” vehicles, but the Bill is silent on connected vehicles, and I wonder why. Maybe the Minister will touch on that. Perhaps I am being too much of a conspiracy theorist, but the topic of “connected and automated” vehicles opens up a whole different range of issues from the straightforward automated vehicles as I understand it. The Minister will correct me if that is not the case. The issue that concerns me is that the software has to make a whole load of decisions when it is operating or driving the vehicle. We have heard from the Minister, and it is accepted, that somewhere between 90% to 95% of vehicle accidents occur due to human error. What happens if a vehicle is under the control of the software and has an accident with a vehicle being driven by a human or with a pedestrian, and the technology is then checked and is found to have been in perfect operating order? Is it the case that the human is assumed to be at fault? We need an answer to that question because it will have an enormous impact on how insurance companies approach decisions about who is at fault and who should get a payout.

[Sir Hugo Swire]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Clive Efford]

I will not, if the right hon. Gentleman does not mind. I am trying to make a little bit of progress, but I may give way in a while.

The Minister said that he has visited the site in Greenwich that is testing automated vehicles. I was not there, but I heard of an incident where somebody threw a chair in front of the automated vehicle and the vehicle smashed into the chair. That raises the question of what would happen if a child ran into the road. Now, the accident with the chair may have happened even if the vehicle had been driven by a human. The chair may have flown out in front of the car far too late for the car physically to be able to stop, whether driven by a machine or by a human being. But let us imagine an incident where there is an automated vehicle on the road that is capable of making a decision about how to evade an accident.

If a child suddenly ran out in front of the vehicle, the software would be trying, in a split second, to make a decision about the safest evasive action, if any, to take in order to avoid running the child over. We are then immediately in the situation where a machine—a piece of computer software—is making a moral judgment. If we are to open ourselves up to the situation whereby connected and automated vehicles have to make such judgments when incidents or accidents are about to happen, we legislators have to be aware that such eventualities will come around. We must try, as much as possible, to be ahead of the technology, because one thing is becoming quite clear in the debate around emerging technologies: the huge companies are getting ahead of the regulators and legislators, and driving the barriers backwards.

Take, for instance, the recent situation with Uber in London, where the Mayor of London had to step in and take action. There are other examples of technology driving regulators to distraction and forcing us to catch up, such as Airbnb. In some cities, rents have been driven up because of the sudden availability of businesses and people hiring out their properties. Legislation has consequences and so does this Bill.

Automated planes fly on a daily basis; most of the flights that we all take are fully automated. The part of the flight that is controlled by a pilot only lasts for a few minutes. Many people do not appreciate the fact that most of their flight is now controlled by a computer. We are only a fraction away from technology whereby a plane could be flown without a pilot at all. If there were an incident and the plane had to be taken over by someone who is capable of flying it, that could be done from an air traffic control centre. We do not have to have the pilot on board. That technology exists, but the air industry is not imposing that upon us by removing pilots from aeroplanes because public opinion is so much against the idea of fully automated flights.

[Sir Hugo Swire]

But is not that exactly the same in other areas of the industry, such as driverless trains?

[Clive Efford]

Yes, but driverless trains drive on a dedicated track. My point is that such technology is not being implemented in an area where the possibilities already exist—pilotless planes. Yet we are prepared to roll out that technology on our streets and our roads, where quite a complex range of incidents could occur and where vehicles being driven by software will come into contact with humans. I accept that the technology is here. We will have to accept that there will be demand for these types of vehicles, not least driven by the huge companies such as Uber, which already has driverless cabs on the streets of Pittsburgh. We are seeing technology driven forward by these large companies, but we as legislators have to start looking at some of the issues that arise around the moral questions that may have to be answered by machines.