Automated Vehicles Bill [HL]

Lord Cameron of Dillington Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 28th November 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cameron of Dillington (CB)]

My Lords, I support the Bill. It is right that as a nation we should signal our acceptance of this technology, even if it is not quite yet oven-ready or mature enough to be properly rolled out. We are a nation whose future will depend on our ability to adapt and harness new technologies, so we must signal to the entrepreneurial businesses of the world that we are open for such business. “Come and build here” is the message we are giving, and I thoroughly approve.

I also support this Bill in my capacity as an occasional spokesman for both rural Britain and an ever-greener Britain. It will help to improve connectivity and reduce the isolation of the rural elderly, while ensuring that all generations have better access to training, work and leisure. Initially, my thinking went along the lines of each parish having a self-drive vehicle for use by its parishioners, but then I realised that you would not need to do that; you would just need two or three privately owned self-drive cars which could be rented out to parishioners to go to the hospital, shops or even the local evening football training—all cars properly licensed, of course.

Elon Musk believes that not only will self-driving cars be 10 times safer than manual cars but they will, in his words, develop “massive fleet learning”. He also believes that, bearing in mind that we use our car for less than 10% of our waking hours—I am surprised it is that much—just by tapping a button, we will be able to add our car to, say, the Uber 2 fleet and have it earn income for us when we are at work or on vacation. In my case, of course, that would mean I would have to remove my golf clubs from the boot, not to mention the rubbish that always seems to accumulate in my car, but maybe it will be worth it.

Going back to village transport, I fear that it is unlikely that at present the Uber fleet—either manual or self-drive—will be available in most rural villages, but the existence of self-drive vehicles within a community will mean that Mrs Smith, who owns such a car, will be able to lend it out to her neighbours without having to drive it herself or having to worry about the driving skills of old Mr Jones going to the hospital, or even young Master Jones going to football training. As a result, connectivity in rural areas will be dramatically improved—and, believe me, after the lack of housing, the lack of public transport to shops, health services, leisure and even jobs is one of the most serious shortcomings of current rural living if your income happens to be in the lowest quartile.

I have to admit, and I apologise for it, that I was not able to attend the various briefing meetings that have been held in anticipation of this Bill, so I may have missed something, but I have one or two minor concerns that I do not think are touched on in the Bill. They probably fall into the category of ancillary legislation, which the Minister mentioned. As I said, they are not serious concerns, but I hope they are worth mentioning.

For instance, we might have to change the Highway Code and even the law to stop jaywalkers. In certain self-driving vehicle trials in Italy, people tended to walk out in front of automatic vehicles and behave irresponsibly—to challenge them, as it were. I am not sure what that says about the average Italian pedestrian or their current expectation of Italian driving abilities, but my point is that when we have self-drive cars on our roads, it may be that, as in the USA and Switzerland for instance, UK pedestrians should be able to walk across urban roads—I stress urban—only at certain points and when permitted. We do not want early accidents undermining the success of self-drive vehicles— I speak as an inveterate jaywalker.

On the other hand, on the assumption that all AVs will have permanently functioning all-round cameras and even black boxes, people will soon learn. Everything around a self-drive car will be recorded. You might even think twice about smacking your child near a self-drive car.

One other aspect occurred to me. I do not expect an answer as it is probably again an ancillary matter, but there are times when one is driving along and the police wave you down to tell you that there has been an incident of some sort and that you will have to wait or find another route. Clearly, a self-drive car will have no problem either waiting or finding an alternative route, but how will the policeman communicate with a self-drive car and how will the self-drive car know that this is a policeman and not some random joker, trouble- maker or car thief? As I said, neither of my concerns represents an insurmountable problem.

Finally, I have an extra reason to support this Bill. It is the hope that it will encourage the development of the same self-drive technology in other fields, off the road. I realise that the noble Lord has excluded these from the umbrella of this Bill, but I want to state them anyway. I have long had this vision of all farming in the world, particularly on smallholdings in sub-Saharan Africa, being carried out by myriad small, connected and automated tractors—CATs, I call them—about the size of a garden tractor or smaller. They are beginning to be developed. These CATs, I hope, will soon be nurturing the crop in their field carefully, day and night, using their own artificial intelligence and awareness of the weather forecasts, with only the minimal use of sprays and fertilisers, to produce a crop without the need for the farmers themselves to be expensively trained, because that expensive training is in sub-Saharan Africa the major blockage to optimal food production.

The other area for AVs is on the high seas. Rolls-Royce is on record as saying that a greater use of autonomous marine vessels could save the global marine industry up to £80 billion per annum in potential reductions to capital costs, manning costs and fuel costs. However, all that is in the future and, as the Minister said, not particularly relevant to this Bill, even if the technology implicit in the Bill is what is going to make it happen. So I conclude by repeating that I thoroughly approve of the Bill and I look forward to us all ironing out the inevitable potential problems as we take it forward.

Automated Vehicles Bill [HL]

Lord Cameron of Dillington Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 15th January 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cameron of Dillington (CB)]

My Lords, forgive me for intervening before the Minister responds, but the word “rural” in Amendments 51 and Amendment 61 attracted my attention, as you might expect. As I said in my Second Reading speech—and following up on what the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, has just been talking about, the Government have to make a plan, because the SDVs could make a huge difference to rural life, if the rules allow it. I do not expect Uber 2—or whatever you want to call a fleet of for-hire self-drive vehicles—to make an impact. It is not going to come into the countryside, in the same way as Uber 1 has not come into the countryside. It is not economically viable for any fleet of hire vehicles to do so. As I see it, for rural purposes, it is most likely going to be a solution whereby, if it is a big market town, there may be a car available as a self-drive vehicle or, if it is a small rural village, it will probably be a private vehicle either for hire or for free by use of the local community and all its different members.

We will need the Government to enable it to happen. That is really the point that everyone has been making: the Government have to think about it. Can a private citizen allow their SDV to be used by others, either for hire or for free? How easy will it be for private citizens to rent out an SDV locally? As I understand it, the insurance is likely to be covered by the motor manufacturer, but would that insurance cover the situation that I am describing, where an SDV will have a multi-purpose role in a small rural village? I hope that the Government will think about these things.

Automated Vehicles Bill [HL]

Lord Cameron of Dillington Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 6th February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Borwick (Con)]

My Lords, I repeat the declarations of interest that I have made in the past.

I applaud the principles behind the suggestions made by the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley. However, there is a difficulty in coming up with new regulations that are different from elsewhere in the world, and I am afraid that “significantly” falls into that trap. It would make it a lot harder for international companies to work out exactly what was meant by these words. There is no established case law on these matters.

We all know that there are problems with existing human drivers, and we should expect that all autonomous vehicles turn out to be dramatically better than human beings. We should not look for circumstances where humans monitor computers but rather the other way around; computers will be better than humans at this. A lot of people suggest that car insurance will actually reduce when the number of autonomous vehicles increases. So I am afraid that I can only applaud the amendment produced by my noble friend the Minister and reject those proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley.

[Lord Cameron of Dillington (CB)]

I hope the House will forgive me, but these various amendments on safety prompt me to ask the Minister about something that has not featured much in our discussions: the issue of hacking into self-driving vehicles—SDVs. It was touched on peripherally during the debate on data protection in Committee but not really highlighted as a major safety concern, which is why I thought I would bring it up now.

I sat on the House’s Science and Technology Committee when it produced its report on automated vehicles some five or six years ago—I am afraid the doldrums of Covid blur my account of time. I remember that during that committee’s investigation, we spent some time discussing in detail the question of hacking into these vehicles, and I felt it only right that it should feature in our discussions on safety today.

We all know how easy it is for someone, or some group of someones, to hack into our computers from a distance, and it could be a criminals or, worse, an enemy state. Why should it not be the same with an SDV? I raised this subject with Waymo and others, but I have to say that I was not convinced by its assurances that it could not happen. We all know that both at Microsoft and here in Parliament it takes a team of experts, sometimes working around the clock, to keep all our devices free from hackers, and an SDV will just be another device.

I was going to bring this matter up when the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, who is not in his place, had an excellent amendment on the obvious necessity for our emergency services to be able to talk to or even control SDVs in certain circumstances. Sadly, however, I could not be here on the 10 January. I was going to say that if it is too easy for a policeman, an ambulance driver or a fireman to get sufficient access to control an SDV, I feel sure that it will not be impossible for someone with malicious intent to get hold of whatever device or code that makes this possible. Could it be that stealing a car will become easier, and that a suicide bomber will now no longer need to commit suicide but just hack into someone else’s car or an SDV for hire and drive it into a crowd or the gates of Parliament, for example? Or maybe you could commit murder by getting control of a car and driving it into your intended victim. It is also entirely possible that no one would know who had done it, because it had been done from a considerable distance—maybe from the other side of the world.

I do not know whether any of your Lordships have seen a series called “Vigil”, one of these television thriller fictions, in which an armed remote-control drone was captured remotely and used to create death, destruction and mayhem on British soil. However, no one knew who was controlling it, which was the essence of the whodunnit plot. Incidentally, it turned out that it was being controlled all the way from the Middle East. I am afraid my thoughts leapt—rather melodramatically, I admit—from that fiction to the reality of what we are trying to achieve here with the Bill.

I am sure there are technical solutions to all these issues, and the whiz-kids on either side of the good-versus-evil divide will continuously compete with one other to win the war of control. It occurred to me, for instance, that perhaps all policemen should be issued with a zapper that brings to a dead halt any SDV that appears to be behaving dangerously. That may be too drastic a solution but, believe me, we will need some solution. My point is that we are entering a brave new world, and we need to properly think through all the problems we are going to encounter. We particularly need to ensure that SDVs become an accepted and safe reality.

I did not want our debate on the safety of these vehicles or the future to pass without a serious commitment from government to being always on the alert to controlling or at least minimising this safety problem. Therefore, by way of a question, I would like reassurance from the Minister that before companies can be licensed to produce SDVs, there will be checks, monitoring and even the holding of emergency real-life exercises with the police to test against what they would do if a dangerous hacker got control of a vehicle.

Will the Government commit to ongoing vigilance over the licensing process, the manufacturers, the operators, the car hire companies, the taxi services and the so-called Uber 2s, and so on, to minimise the dangers from malicious hackers? I realise, of course, that all this vigilance will not eradicate the danger of hacking into such self-driving devices. It is clear that we are unlikely to ever see the end of people trying to get into our other devices, our banking services and the like, but I hope that ongoing vigilance will at least minimise this particular safety risk.