As many will know, the Autonomous Vehicle Act 2024 (the “AV Act”) paved the way to legalising the use of autonomous vehicles on UK roads. However, before any autonomous vehicles can be used on the UK roads (other than under controlled trials), it is important to be aware that the AV Act does not, at this stage, authorise those vehicles for use on the UK’s roads. Rather, the AV Act grants the Secretary of State the power to authorise this at a later date once the “safety principles” for such usage have been determined.
On 10 June 2025, the Secretary of State launched a call for evidence and consultation on the secondary legislation which will be required to establish these “safety principles”:
Call for Evidence on Automated Vehicles: Statement of Safety Principles
The AV Act requires the Secretary of State to prepare a Statement of Safety Principles which is to be used in different ways across the safety framework for automated vehicles including for:
- pre-deployment authorisation checks;
- carrying out in-use monitoring and regulatory compliance checks; and
- undertaking annual assessment on the overall performance of automated vehicles.
This call for evidence seeks information to support an understanding of:
- what safety principles might be used;
- the safety standards which might be described; and
- how safety performance can be measured.
There are also questions about the development of safety principles and how those could be used in practice.
See the “full list of questions” section of the call for evidence for all questions: Automated vehicles: statement of safety principles – GOV.UK
Consultation on Automated Vehicles: Protecting Marketing Terms
The AV Act also gives the Secretary of State the power to protect certain terms, so that they can only be used to market vehicles which have been authorised under the AV Act as being automated (self-driving). In turn, the AV Act then provides that these protected terms must not be used to market driver assistance systems.
This consultation seeks views on this including whether certain terms including “self-driving”, “driverless” and “automated driving” should be protected, whether any symbols should be protected and whether restrictions should only apply only when used to describe a vehicle as a whole.
See section 4 of the consultation for the full list of questions: Automated vehicles: protecting marketing terms – GOV.UK.
Deadline
The deadline for responding to both the call for evidence and consultation (there is no requirement to respond to both though) is 23:59 on 1 September 2025.
Here at Squire Patton Boggs, we are monitoring these developments closely as they are of critical importance to all companies who are involved in the development of self-driving systems and in relation to the design, manufacture and operation of any vehicle that can drive itself without any driver input. This is because the OEM/operator will be liable for any accidents that arise whilst any such vehicles are being used in fully autonomous mode. Please do let us know if you have any questions on any of the issues which arise in this critical area for the future of mobility.