The Automated and Electric Vehicles Bill has become law

The Automated and Electric Vehicles Bill is now an Act of Parliament (law), after receiving Royal Assent in July 2018.

As well as taking a significant step towards improving air quality, cutting congestion and improving road safety, it gives the green light to improvements in electric charging infrastructure and also modernises insurance rules to accommodate autonomous vehicles. This is part of an ongoing programme to support the safe introduction of automated vehicle technologies.

The Act gives the government powers to ensure motorway services are upgraded with a sufficient number of charging points as well as:

• ensuring that public charge points are compatible with all vehicles;
• setting reliability standards; and
• standardising how they’re paid for.

The Act also extends compulsory motor insurance to include driverless cars in one policy, ensuring that drivers are covered both when driving and when the vehicle is in automated mode. By enabling insurers to recover costs when technology failure causes an accident, rather than leaving drivers responsible for accidents they couldn’t prevent, insurers will be able to start developing new products for autonomous vehicles.

The Act forms part of the government’s Road to Zero strategy, which sets out new measures to “clean up road transport and lead the world in the developing, manufacturing and using zero emission road vehicles”

Source: Allianz Insurance Plc