The advent of driverless and automated cars will potentially bring many benefits by making driving easier, improving road safety, reducing emissions and easing congestion. The current legal and regulatory framework would need to reviewed and amended appropriately. There is no reason why testing cannot take place on UK roads in the near future. If the person testing the vehicle is fully trained they could remain responsible for the control of the vehicle and ensuring compliance with road traffic laws in the testing phase. Problems will occur from a legal point of view when we move to having fully automated cars with no driver present. If there was a crash issues of liability would arise with regard to whether the owner, manufacturer or some other person is responsible from a liability point of view. We will need to rewrite large parts of driving law to accommodate such changes,
Currently we have real advancements in technology to improve the safety of cars such as ABS, parking monitors and cruise control. Robot cars are not too far away and will inevitably lead to a reduction in the number of crashes which currently stand at being 90% due to human error.
