My Lords, I am pleased to take part in this debate, first to support the amendments in the name of my noble friend Lady Bowles. I will also speak to Amendments 22 and 43 in my name.
My noble friend has raised some important issues about the adequacy of simulation as a way of establishing the safety of automated vehicles. Cycling UK, in its briefing to some of us, has raised similar issues in the context of the more vulnerable road users. Experience in the USA—very definite real-life experience, especially in San Francisco—has revealed that there is no substitute for real-life testing and that permission to operate on real roads can be given too easily.
We all know that how we drive is based on the skills we have learned and the experience we have developed as human beings. I have no doubt that a vehicle driving itself will in some ways be a lot less vulnerable than we are to feeling sleepy, losing concentration and so on. But it is a very complex thing to simulate and build something that, for example, notices that the gentleman ahead, who has a white stick, will therefore be blind or very poorly sighted. It is difficult for a simulation to tell the difference between the hesitation by the side of the road of an elderly person who is looking anxiously around and that of someone who is hesitating because they are reading their phone at the same time, or to notice that someone who has just stepped off the pavement is a teenager who was having a joke with his mates 10 seconds before and may not be concentrating. These are all things that we notice every day and make a judgment on; we see potential issues that we may have to take into account.
I am sure that simulating all that can be done, but it is the real-life, real-road experience that needs to be taken into account—the subtle messages. It is difficult to imagine a road system much more complex than that in the UK, with its bendy roads that are heavily trafficked and a high number of pedestrians. I was recently in the USA, where I was immediately struck, as I looked down from the air, by the regularity of the grid system. When I got into towns and cities, I was struck by the very low number of pedestrians in the streets compared with Britain. We have a much more complex and unpredictable set of circumstances.
My Amendment 22 refers to the checks and permissions that will be required before foreign vehicles are allowed on UK roads. Foreign vehicles drive on our roads all the time, but it will be much more complex in future. At the moment, we rely on the fact that foreign vehicles have had permission in their own country and are deemed to be satisfactory for their own country, and that the driver, if they have come from abroad, will be adapting—some much better than others, obviously. We rely on that awareness and
adaptation. The cars, vehicles, vans and HGVs concerned will have to download a whole new lot of software, because every perception of the vehicle—all the distance, width and so on—will have to be done from a different point of view. They will have to download the map of the whole UK that these vehicles will operate on. Some of our road signs are different from those in other countries, so awareness of them will be a more complex issue.
5.30 pm
Most of the foreign vehicles on our roads are from EU countries. It is certainly true that the EU is well ahead of us in regulating automated vehicles—France and Germany are particularly advanced—despite the fact that it was said that our situation would be a Brexit benefit. My question to the Minister is: are we learning from the EU’s experience? How are we monitoring the issues that have arisen in other countries so that we can take those into account? We have one difference, which is that we drive on the left, that makes it much more complex than moving, for example, from France to Germany or any other EU country. In future, it will have to be a more formal process for foreign vehicles to drive on our roads. As my noble friend has commented, the USA has already discovered problems as vehicles adapt to what are relatively minor differences from one state to another.
There are also issues, of course, about security and the ownership of the personal information that goes with the vehicle. This is not just an issue of Europeans bringing their cars to the UK on holiday; it is about a massive number of goods vehicles, light vans to HGVs, on which our economy largely depends. Obviously, you would be aware of this issue if you traded regularly in this country and would treat it as a business issue and a business cost to be dealt with, but there are, of course, companies that will visit the UK only occasionally. Of course, any issues would apply in reverse to British companies wanting to trade abroad using automated vehicles in other countries.
I turn to Amendment 43. An obvious issue that is bound to occur regularly is what happens when a manufacturer or software developer ceases to trade. I hope that the Government have a full response to this because I am sure I am not the first person to think of it, but I could not find a satisfactory answer within the Bill. This is an industry made up of many small businesses, as well as the giants, and failures will be common. Various studies and reports have been sent to us in the last few weeks. Of those that I have looked at, the ones from the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders, the Transport Committee in the other place and the Law Commission have all touched on the need for the ongoing maintenance and updating of software. That becomes an acute issue when a company goes bust.
Time is of the essence: anyone who has a modern car will know that, from time to time, you get software updates on almost a weekly basis. For the safety of the car, there can be no time lapse between a company going bust, or ceasing to trade for any number of reasons, and dealing with updating the software. Who will inherit the responsibility for that? Who will have the legal obligation to do it, and how will it be enforced?
I hope that the Government have a full answer on that very practical issue. I look forward to the Minister’s response.