UK is Looking At Legal Autonomous Driving Cars on the Roads in 2026

The UK will allow self-driving cars on its streets from 2026. The bill which has now become a law can be looked at as a major turning point in the history of UK automotive innovation and road safety. 

With the Automated Vehicles Act, the UK will see fully autonomous vehicles in the next couple of years, provided they “achieve a level of safety at least as high as careful and competent human drivers”. 

While the law states a human to be present in the vehicle at all times, it states that they won’t be held responsible for how their vehicle acts while operating in its autonomous settings. Instead, the government will hold the manufacturer of the car and the insurance company that covers it responsible. The person in the car, in this case, will not be deemed a ‘driver’ but a ‘user-in-charge’. 

In a release that was put out by the Transport Ministry, Secretary Mark Harper said  “Britain stands at the threshold of an automotive revolution, and this new law is a milestone moment for our self-driving industry which has the potential to change the way we travel forever.”

“While this doesn’t take away people’s ability to choose to drive themselves, our landmark legislation means self-driving vehicles can be rolled out on British roads as soon as 2026”, he added. 

At the moment, the move has generally invited optimism. SMMT boss Mike Hawes stated that the law puts the UK in line with a handful of other global markets that have already implemented their regulatory framework for the tech. 

The optimism, however, seems contrary to the public’s opinion, who is not looking at this through rose-shaded glasses. RAC stated that 58 per cent of the people they surveyed said that they feared fully-autonomous cars on the streets with only 15 per cent who supported the move. 

“There are also some very practical hurdles to overcome,” explained the RAC’s head of policy, Simon Williams, “such as how the cars of tomorrow will be able to successfully and safely navigate the UK’s complex web of streets – especially with so many potholes and faded road markings.”

Another notable mention would be the government’s efforts to bring down a heavy hammer on manufacturers misrepresenting their cars as ‘fully autonomous’. We all know Tesla’s infamous headline appearances after it got caught in a handful of messy cases after its systems were brought to light as defective.