The first two public consultations relating to the Automated Vehicles Act 2024 (the AVA) have now been published by the Department for Transport.

The AVA is a monumental piece of legislation, but it cannot be implemented without a substantial number of detailed regulations to underpin it, all of which need to be drafted and approved by parliament. The government is targeting full implementation of the AVA's regulatory framework by the second half of 2027, so expect these to be the first of a number of public consultations/calls for evidence.

Codification of Safety Principles

The document, titled 'Automated vehicles: statement of safety principles', is a call for evidence focusing on codification of the fundamental safety principles that will sit behind all aspects of automated vehicle (AV) approval and regulation. Topics covered include:

• Defining the safety standards to be used, including comparing AVs to 'careful and competent' human drivers – in other words, precisely how safe should an AV be?;
• Use of safety principles before and after deployment of AVs;
• Assessing the safety impact of AVs on other road users;
• Monitoring AV performance; and
• AV cyber resilience.

The call for evidence runs until 1 September and can be found here.

Cracking down on misleading marketing

The second document, titled 'Automated vehicle: protecting marketing terms', is a public consultation on protecting certain terms, so that they can only be used to market vehicles authorised as being automated, to the exclusion of Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS).

The AVA includes two new marketing offences: 1) the "protected terms" offence, which restricts the use of listed terms; and 2) the "confusion" offence – a wider, 'catch all' offence that applies to any commercial communication likely to confuse end-users that an unauthorised vehicle can travel autonomously without human oversight.

The consultation refers to the protected terms offence only. The offence only applies to those acting in the course of business and the communication must be ‘in connection with the promotion or supply’ of products or services. This is noted in the AVA to be the terms used in the promotion or supply of: a road vehicle; equipment (including software) of a road vehicle (e.g. an aftermarket kit, sold ‘to make your car self-driving'), or any product or service, if the communication is likely to confuse end-users of road vehicles. The offence only applies if the communication is directed at an end-user or potential end-user. Company directors, secretaries and managers may also be held personally liable for these offences.

For now, only listed vehicles will be allowed to be marketed using the protected terms and once the relevant part of the AVA is in place, only authorised vehicles will be able to do so. The consultation is about what those protected terms should be. The intention in protecting the terms is to protect consumers, by conveying a clear and succinct message about how to interact with driving automation. This is set against a backdrop of perceived consumer confusion caused by mismarketing and confused reporting regarding vehicle technologies generally.

The Department for Transport, following the Law Commission's recommendations published in January 2022 (on which the AVA was based), do not want the list to be overly prescriptive and have put forward a relatively limited list of possible "protected marketing terms", noting that other confusing terms would be caught by the general "confusion" offence. The proposed list of terms is:

• Self-driving;
• Drive itself;
• Driverless;
• Automated driving;
• Autonomous driving; and
• Drive autonomously.

The marketing terms consultation also runs until 1 September and can be found here.

How we can help

DAC Beachcroft has been at the foreground of the vehicle technology discussion for many years. We have worked closely with insurers to draft more than twenty responses to consultations and calls for evidence on a wide range of vehicle technology issues, and we were the most cited law firm in the Law Commission's comprehensive 2022 AV report to parliament.

If you would like to discuss these matters with us, and perhaps arrange for us to assist with preparation of your response to either of the above consultations, please contact our Strategic Advisory Team.

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