London poised to lead Europe with fully autonomous electric taxis by 2024

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1. https://www.lawgazette.co.uk/news-focus/in-depth-self-driving-taxis-much-legal-groundwork-remains-to-be-done/5124959.article - Please view link - unable to able to access data
2. https://apnews.com/article/1bcf0ea7e2a4992cc1588cf837e0de5e - Waymo, the autonomous vehicle company spun out from Google, has announced plans to launch its driverless taxi service in London in 2026. This marks a significant step in their international expansion after operating successfully in several U.S. cities including Phoenix, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Atlanta, and Austin. Waymo will begin testing its self-driving vehicles on London streets in the coming weeks, using human safety drivers while it seeks government approval. The company is preparing to meet the U.K.'s new regulations for autonomous vehicles, which require safety standards comparable to competent human drivers and rigorous inspections. Waymo also plans to participate in a scheduled pilot program for self-driving taxis and buses in spring 2026. Additionally, the company must comply with rules set by Transport for London, which regulates all taxi services in the capital.
3. https://www.euronews.com/next/2022/01/27/absolve-users-of-legal-responsibility-in-crashes-involving-driverless-cars-watchdog-says - A UK law commission released a report recommending that carmakers should be responsible for driverless cars, instead of the user. Users of autonomous cars should not be legally responsible for road safety, a legal watchdog in the UK has proposed. They should be classified as 'users-in-charge' rather than drivers and would be exempt from responsibility for infringements such as dangerous driving, exceeding the speed limit, or running a red light. Instead, the carmakers would be liable in these cases. However, the user-in-charge would still have responsibility for carrying insurance, checking loads, or ensuring that children wear seat belts. The new guidelines have been proposed by the Law Commission of England and Wales, and the Scottish Law Commission and were outlined in their report released on Wednesday.
4. https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/self-driving-vehicles-new-safety-ambition/outcome/self-driving-vehicles-new-safety-ambition-summary-of-responses-and-government-response - The UK government has published a summary of responses and its own response to the consultation on self-driving vehicles' new safety ambition. Respondents suggested increased industry transparency about vehicle capabilities, safety data, fail-safes, and monitoring, for the public to make informed decisions. Several respondents expressed the opinion that minimum safety standards for self-driving vehicles would increase overall confidence in them. This desire for greater transparency about vehicle capabilities was something the general public also wanted to help build acceptability of the technology and trust in both the vehicles and the processes to assure their continuing safety. A proportion of responses covered wider statistics and data requirements in relation to safety regulation with several stating that data is needed to prove safety, potentially before deployment, and to demonstrate liability in road collisions. There was a recognition of the difficulty in determining careful and competent statistically. The issue of transparency and trust in regulation is important and government published clear proposals for a new self-driving vehicle safety framework in CAM (Connected and automated mobility) 2025, based on the 4-year review by the Law Commissions. The proposals require legislative change and all new regulations will be subject to public consultation. The timeframe for this legislative change was raised by several respondents. Government has committed to legislate with the introduction of the Automated Vehicles Bill into the House of Lords in November 2023. Data is an important and complex issue in relation to the regulation of self-driving safety. Data reporting and publication requirements are being considered in relation to each element of the safety framework: approval, authorisation, in-use regulation, incident investigation. Access to data will be an important part of the safety assurance of self-driving vehicles, and the Automated Vehicles Bill makes provision for information to be shared for the purposes of safety regulation. In support of this, the government is working across departments and in conjunction with stakeholders, including manufacturers, telecom operators and enforcement agencies, to map out data uses, availability and requirements.
5. https://arxiv.org/abs/1802.05050 - The advent of autonomous vehicles is envisaged to disrupt the auto insurance liability model. Compared to the current model where liability is largely attributed to the driver, autonomous vehicles necessitate the consideration of other entities in the automotive ecosystem including the auto manufacturer, software provider, service technician and the vehicle owner. The proliferation of sensors and connecting technologies in autonomous vehicles enables an autonomous vehicle to gather sufficient data for liability attribution, yet increased connectivity exposes the vehicle to attacks from interacting entities. These possibilities motivate potential liable entities to repudiate their involvement in a collision event to evade liability. While the data collected from vehicular sensors and vehicular communications is an integral part of the evidence for arbitrating liability in the event of an accident, there is also a need to record all interactions between the aforementioned entities to identify potential instances of negligence that may have played a role in the accident. In this paper, we propose a Blockchain based framework that integrates the concerned entities in the liability model and provides untampered evidence for liability attribution and adjudication. We first describe the liability attribution model, identify key requirements and describe the adversarial capabilities of entities. Also, we present a detailed description of data contributing to evidence. Our framework uses permissioned BC and partitions the BC to tailor data access to relevant BC participants. Finally, we conduct a security analysis to verify that the identified requirements are met and resilience of our proposed framework to identified attacks.
6. https://arxiv.org/abs/2309.01206 - This study compares the safety of autonomous- and human drivers. It finds that the Waymo One autonomous service is significantly safer towards other road users than human drivers are, as measured via collision causation. The result is determined by comparing Waymo's third party liability insurance claims data with mileage- and zip-code-calibrated Swiss Re (human driver) private passenger vehicle baselines. A liability claim is a request for compensation when someone is responsible for damage to property or injury to another person, typically following a collision. Liability claims reporting and their development is designed using insurance industry best practices to assess crash causation contribution and predict future crash contributions. In over 3.8 million miles driven without a human being behind the steering wheel in rider-only (RO) mode, the Waymo Driver incurred zero bodily injury claims in comparison with the human driver baseline of 1.11 claims per million miles (cpmm). The Waymo Driver also significantly reduced property damage claims to 0.78 cpmm in comparison with the human driver baseline of 3.26 cpmm. Similarly, in a more statistically robust dataset of over 35 million miles during autonomous testing operations (TO), the Waymo Driver, together with a human autonomous specialist behind the steering wheel monitoring the automation, also significantly reduced both bodily injury and property damage cpmm compared to the human driver baselines.
7. https://www.fleetnews.co.uk/comment-article-landing/incoming-driverless-taxis-inspire-cautious-optimism-but-hurdles-remain - Yet there is currently little exposure, accident or loss data to guide underwriting, making liability assessments and risk pricing far more difficult. This also introduces new vulnerabilities, such as software updates, cyber-security and potential system failures. The Automated and Electric Vehicles Act makes insurance providers liable for incidents when the vehicle is driving itself. In principle, insurers will need access to vehicle sensor data to assess claims fairly and build accurate risk profiles. However, the practical details of how such data-sharing will work in the UK remains unclear and has yet to be settled in Parliament, once again relying on secondary legislation. Without accurate, standardised and timely data, insurers will struggle to handle claims as well as build accurate risk profiles or set premium appropriately. How this framework develops will be integral to the success of UK pilots and, ultimately, commercial adoption. Repair costs are a core underwriting factor.