The Law Commission and Scottish Law Commission have published their eagerly awaited report on autonomous vehicles. 

The report recommends introducing a new Automated Vehicles Act, to regulate vehicles that can drive themselves. It recommends drawing a clear distinction between features that just provide assistance to drivers, such as adaptive cruise control, and those that are self-driving.

Under the Law Commissions’ proposals, when a car is authorised by a regulatory agency as having “self-driving features”, and those features are in use, the person in the driving seat would no longer be responsible for how the car drives. Instead, the manufacturer or other body that obtained the authorisation (an Authorised Self-Driving Entity or ASDE) would face regulatory sanctions if anything goes wrong. 

The English and Scottish Law Commission have made a bold proposal to short liability away from those in the driving seat in driverless cars.  What are the proposals and implications? Read on here: Lewis Silkin - The Law Commissions final report on driverless cars proposes