New legislation puts self-driving cars one step closer to taking to the roads in the UK

UK prime minister Rishi Sunak’s government signaled its intention to introduce new legislation to develop and regulate the sector.

Transcript

00:00 [MUSIC PLAYING]

00:03 My ministers will introduce new legal frameworks

00:13 to support the safe commercial development of emerging

00:16 industries, such as self-driving vehicles.

00:19 [MUSIC PLAYING]

00:22 [MUSIC PLAYING]

00:26 This is really important, isn't it,

00:41 in terms of building social acceptance and trust

00:44 in any sort of autonomous device or vehicle.

00:46 So for Starship, we're at level four autonomy,

00:49 which means that our robots, 99% of the time,

00:52 are autonomous.

00:53 They're operating in the world around them,

00:55 understanding the world around them,

00:56 and actually their environment that's around them.

00:59 And they can then react accordingly,

01:00 because they understand what they're seeing around them.

01:03 They understand humans or street furniture.

01:05 They understand cars and traffic lights.

01:07 So that's why regulation is important,

01:09 because if you're going to have companies put in vehicles

01:13 or devices like ours, our robots,

01:15 out into public spaces, the public

01:17 need to be sure that that's safe.

01:19 The last thing in the world that you want to happen

01:21 is for a company that's not as good at that, who

01:23 thinks they're better at autonomy than they are,

01:25 to come along and for it not to work,

01:27 because that'll set back the entire sector as a whole,

01:30 because building trust is difficult.

01:32 [MUSIC PLAYING]

01:35 (gentle music)