Professor Siddartha Khastgir, Head of the Safe Autonomy Research Group at WMG at the  University of Warwick, contributed his expertise to the latest Parliament Office of Science and Technology (POST) briefing on Automated Vehicles (AV). This peer-reviewed briefing is primarily published to provide the most up-to-date research to MPs in response to the AV Act 2024 and future AV development and deployment in the UK.

The briefing highlights the current state of AV development in the UK, including its social; economic; and environmental benefits and concerns, as well as the recommended next steps.

Currently, there is no universally agreed-upon testing method to define and measure the safety of AVs, for example, how many miles should be driven to prove that an AV is safer than a human driver. Professor Khastgir suggests focussing on the quality of the testing miles and establishing operational conditions in different road driving scenarios in detail, like heavy snow or rain. This would enable the users to be well-informed about the safety boundaries when using technology in different road conditions.

Professor Khastgir also emphasises the importance of communicating safety beyond the self-driving ecosystem, especially to the general public. He urges the technology developers and other stakeholders to put the public at the heart of this and talk openly and accurately about its capabilities and limitations, enabling future users to know how to use it safely. To achieve this, WMG co-founded Partners for Automated Vehicle Education United Kingdom (PAVE UK), in February 2024, with the Department for Transport; the Department of Business and Trade; the Centre for Connected and Autonomous Vehicles; and Transport for West Midlands, to deliver public awareness and education programmes.

Professor Khastgir said, “I am very honoured to have had the opportunity to share our research and expertise in AV safety with parliamentarians, to help them understand more about the current state of AV development in the UK.

“Now is a unique time for the UK as we enter the secondary legislation phase of the AV Act. The current safety ambition of the UK of ‘careful and competent human driver’ is good for philosophy but lacks technical understanding and detail. To envision a safe AV future industry, academia, policymakers, and the government need to work together to share knowledge, exchange information, and tackle the social and technical challenges. At WMG, we have been leading and facilitating cross-sector collaborations to ensure the safe deployment of AV on the UK’s roads.

“PAVE UK, the national initiative to educate the public on AVs, is working hard to create inclusive public educational materials, similar to this POSTbrief, and an engagement programme for the public to enable a two-way conversation on AV development and make the research and development in this space more accessible and inclusive.”

Professor Khastgir said a lot more needs to be done to gain public trust in AVs. To help the public understand, the educational materials that PAVE UK is developing will introduce AV and its functions, benefits and limitations, ethics and regulation in this space and use cases in the UK. The materials will be reviewed by local and regional public groups before publication. These materials will then be shared with different social groups, schools, general public and industry.

The POSTBrief in full can be found here: https://doi.org/10.58248/PB62

Find out more about WMG’s Safe Autonomy Research Group here: https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/sci/wmg/safeautonomy/