Nissan’s Qashqai will be the first mass-market car in Britain to have the ability to drive itself on a motorway.
Driverless cars could become a standard feature of UK motor insurance policies under measures announced on Wednesday.
Autonomous driving technology is still in its infancy, but the government is keen to encourage it as a way of cutting congestion, boosting the economy and improving safety.
But insurance is a potential problem. Under existing rules, compulsory car insurance covers personal liability for accidents. The Modern Transport Bill announced in the Queen’s Speech, an annual event that sets out the government’s legislative programme, will extend compulsory cover to accidents where the car itself, rather than the driver, is at fault.
The insurance industry welcomed the news. “The legislation will provide more clarity to consumers and the market around how insurance operates in an environment where there are more autonomous vehicles on the road,” said James Dalton, director of general insurance policy at the Association of British Insurers.
The government’s proposals did not contain much detail though, saying only that the bill would ensure appropriate insurance is available. The finer points could be tricky to work out.
“What we’ll need to work out, working with government, is what new legal and insurance solutions there should be when the car is in fully driverless mode,” said Alistair Kinley, director of policy and government affairs at law firm BLM. “The answers are going to have to involve the vehicle manufacturers as well as insurers, so that passengers and other road users are still protected when a fully autonomous car has an accident.”
Working out when manufacturers, rather than drivers, are responsible will be one of the big challenges. “This is a very big question for the insurance industry,” said Mr Dalton. “I can’t see a scenario where the entire vehicle manufacturing industry picks up the entire liability for every accident in the future.”
Fully driverless cars are still some years off, and Mr Dalton said that in the meantime the industry and the government need to work out how insurance will work when some cars have some types of automation.
“The challenge is what happens when you have a mixed fleet with autonomous vehicles on the road as well as conventional vehicles. There are a number of public policy challenges.”
Growing use of automation is expected to have a huge impact on the insurance industry.
Research from Swiss Re and Here, a mapping company, suggests that widespread use of automation — from collision warning systems to blind spot information — could halve accidents on motorways and cut incidents on other roads by 28 per cent. That, they say, could wipe $20bn off car insurance premiums globally over the next five years.
However Moody’s, which thinks that a majority of cars could be self-driving by 2045, warned this week that autonomous vehicles may be more expensive to replace, which could push up premiums.
Experiments with the technology are already under way. Earlier this year the British government announced a total of £20m of funding for eight projects to develop autonomous vehicles. And last month Volvo said it would start trials of autonomous vehicles in the UK next year.
Source: Financial Times