Autonomous vehicles could drastically prevent accidents

Encouraging greater use of autonomous and driverless vehicles could prevent up to 95 per cent of traffic accidents, says the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IME).

As well as providing a large boost to the UK economy, the IME has launched a new report that claims that the government needs to ‘urgently’ address the barriers to adoption and insurance issues.

The report, ‘Autonomous and Driverless cars’, makes three key recommendations: that the Transport Systems Catapult conduct a public consultation to look at how we can integrate and implement new regulatory regimes; that all car dealerships and garages work with vehicle manufacturers to ensure that they can provide adequate information, and give the required training, to any new purchaser of a vehicle; and that the Department for Transport address the safety issues of mixed road use, looking at how autonomous vehicles can be integrated onto our road network with appropriate road signage and markings in place or updated.

Philippa Oldham, Head of Transport at the Institution of the Mechanical Engineers and Lead Author of the report, said: “The benefits to this sort of technology are huge, with estimates that the overall UK economic benefit could be as much as £51 billion a year due to fewer accidents, improved productivity and increased trade.

“Currently 95 per cent of all crashes happen due to driver error, so it makes sense for government, industry and academia to redouble efforts to look at how we phase out human involvement in driving vehicles. There needs to be much more action from the government to help integrate driverless vehicles into the current UK transport network.”