Automated Vehicles Bill [HL]

Lord Naseby Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 28th November 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Naseby (Con)]

My Lords, I am sure that I speak for all colleagues in the Chamber when I say that this debate has been enhanced by the contributions of the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, and my noble friend Lord Holmes. The area that they have covered is so important.

I want to record in Hansard that today is an auspicious day for British transport, because today a jet took off from London airport using synthetic fuel to fly to the States. That is a huge achievement of the United Kingdom, and our development, our work and our taxpayers’ money has brought that about. I would like to record that in the context of this particular Bill.

Some 60 years ago-plus, I was a fast jet pilot. In those days, safety was absolutely paramount. If you were at the controls on your own, flying at anything up to 40,000 feet at a speed of up to 0.82 mach, you had to know what was happening; there was only one person who made the decision, with plenty of instruments reflecting the actions you were taking.

When I was preparing for the Bill, I was reminded of three fatal crashes that have occurred thanks to automation. I am sure that colleagues will remember them. There was the Boeing 737 MAX 8, in October 2018, when 189 people were killed, with the two pilots totally unable to do anything to stop the automation and the stall that followed. In March 2019, on the same aircraft—not the same one, but the same model—157 people were killed. What went wrong? It was failure of software. We fight with software all the time, but failure of software when you have passengers has been proven to be very difficult.

I had a look at the French one in the Caribbean, because I knew it was different from the Boeing example. The situation there was a weather condition. The flight was on 1 June 2019, as the plane headed towards a thunderstorm. The pitot head froze—the instrument on the front of the aircraft that measures the speed and height of the aircraft. The net result was that the instrument recorded inaccurately what the status of the aircraft was, the aircraft stalled and all the passengers were killed. So that is where I am coming from in relation to this Bill, where safety is stated to be at its core.

Let us leave the airline world and go on to the implications for drivers. The lessons learned from those aircraft crashes are, first, that drivers must be trained. It is quite a challenge—and we know that there is a whole variety of abilities of those driving on the road today. I do not know the answer to that question, other than that it is a question that has to be asked.

Then there are what they call “uncommanded activations”: software that suddenly says something to you when you have not put it into a programme, or you did not think you had, and you have to decide what to do. That is the partial one that is a challenge. Then there are the potential alerts: if you are half in control, or not in control, are those alerts recognised? Fourthly, as I have already indicated, there are weather conditions, which change dramatically in our country. There was heavy frost in Bedfordshire the day before yesterday, and all the instruments on the car had to be cleaned. On the car that I drove here today, I had to clean the camera for reversing. So weather conditions do affect things.

We also know, from the very good briefing from the Library, the history from California at this point in time. We need to recognise that the States are way ahead of us: they have been doing it that much longer. They have had these vehicles going around San Francisco, but in one paragraph the head of firefighting services says that

“driverless cars had interfered with emergency services 40 times since … 2020”.

Then there is another paragraph about San Francisco, which is very relevant—any of us who have been to San Francisco will know that it is all up hill and down dale. There are examples of where

“the cars have run red lights, crashed into a bus, blocked pedestrian crossings and cycle lanes and caused traffic jams”,

et cetera. I give a final quote:

“The California Department of Motor Vehicles states that as of 10 November 2023 it had received 673 autonomous vehicle collision reports”.


Well, if safety is primary to this legislation, that is not a very good start, is it?

Now I turn to the Bill itself. I will not go through the varying stages that have been discussed already, but seven years have gone by—quite a long time—before we get around to this Bill. Here we are after seven years, and the fact of the matter is that we as a country have fallen behind. We were in the vanguard seven years ago; we are not in the vanguard any more but in the guard’s van, almost, in terms of technical development, et cetera. We ought to make sure that we know what other people have done so far before we start spending a lot of government money just mirroring tests that others have done. I believe that is a very important point. I would like to know from my noble friend, not necessarily this evening but in writing, how much the taxpayer has already spent on this project.

What about the context for authorised automated vehicles? Who ensures that those vehicles actually stick to the restrictions that some of them have apparently been given? If the restriction is the motorway, who will ensure that it sticks to the motorway? I do not know the answer. What is the estimated cost of updating the digital information across the whole road network in GB? We talk about that and it was in my noble friend’s opening statement that this all applies to GB, but we certainly do not have that digital information at this point in time.

What work is being done on the current driving test? I have a granddaughter who is studying the Highway Code and everything else, having driving lessons. At what point will that age group, those young people, be brought in, so that at least the Highway Code is brought up to date? For me, Clause 2 at the moment is really pie in the sky. It says:

“The principles must be framed with a view to securing that road safety in Great Britain will be better as a result of the use of authorised automated vehicles on roads”.


Well, what did I see on the way down this morning? I do not know exactly how many cars there are on the road, but it cannot be far short of 1 million. Then there are hundreds of lorries and possibly millions of cyclists, few of whom know what the Highway Code is. One has only to see what happens out the front here. They do not stop at that pedestrian crossing with the red light; they just cycle right through it. Then there are the delivery bikes with very creative motorcyclists who weave in and out. Then there are the scooters. Believe it or not, in Bedfordshire, the week before last, the driver who is taking me back tonight said to me, “You won’t believe this, Michael, but a motorised skateboard overtook me the other day in a 20 mph zone”. I said, “God, I don’t believe it”, and Barry said, “Not just that: further up, he picks up a passenger and comes back the other way”. These are not even licensed, but they are very dangerous. I do not know where all this fits in.

Finally, there is the question of potholes, as even the Prime Minister admits. I do not know whether AI can work out whether there is a pothole underneath a big puddle, but it is a problem. Weather conditions and potholes affect driveability and, as we know, driving skills vary. In my judgment, for once, we should learn from others. My repeated request to His Majesty’s Government is that, before we spend too much money on it, we find out what Germany, Sweden and particularly the United States have been doing, and pull that together—then we might have the basis of a Bill.

This is a 100-clause Bill—I note this to the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley—and we have to get the framework there but, just for once, we should be strong-minded. I was in business for years. We should stick to the jobs that we are good at: synthetic fuels for aviation, hydrogen and electric vehicles, as mentioned. We have plenty of work to do there. I am sceptical about the need for the Bill at this time. We are not in the vanguard. If safety really is the core, we should proceed very measuredly.