PACTS welcomes the Transport Committee’s Self-driving vehicles inquiry. Our remit is transport safety and our evidence is in relation to the Committee’s question about safety.
PACTS supports research into connected and autonomous and self-driving vehicles. We take a positive approach to their development whatever can be learned to improve road safety.
Many questions remain to be answered and many issues resolved before of automated vehicles (AVs) can be deployed safely for public use on our roads. We would be opposed to taking shortcuts which compromised safety in order to accelerate the deployment of this technology. Testing of AVs should be controlled and risk to the public should be as low as reasonably possible. The public should not be used as guinea pigs or used to test “beta” systems on public roads.
There are differences between self-driving, automated and autonomous vehicles. The abbreviation “AV” is widely used. We use it here for simplicity.
