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.