U.K. Minister Promises Driverless Tech on Roads by 2026

A U.K. government transport minister is claiming full driverless technology will be allowed on the country’s roads by the end of 2026.

The BBC reports the comments made by Mark Harper who told its BBC Radio 4 Today news program that the government will pass the required legislation before the end of this government’s tenure at the end of 2024. He also says he expects to see the owners of autonomous vehicles being able to travel without having to have hands on the steering wheel or watch where they are going within a three-year timeframe.

This flies in the face of mounting concerns over safety issues with driverless vehicles highlighted in the recent suspension of robo-taxi services by General Motors’ Cruise operation following an accident in San Francisco.

Yet, says Harper: “The legislation is going through parliament at the moment, so hopefully we'll get that through parliament by the end of 2024. Probably by as early as 2026 people will start seeing some elements of these cars that have full self-driving capabilities being rolled out. It has a huge number of potential uses, the obvious one is 88% or so of road traffic collisions we see today are caused by driver error of some description. There is a real potential for this sort of technology to actually improve safety on the roads, not just for drivers, not just for passengers but for other vulnerable road users – pedestrians, cyclists – to really improve road safety, which is a real win for everybody."

Currently in the U.K. only the automated drive system in Ford's Mustang Mach-E could allow drivers to take their hands off the wheel on certain stretches of motorway in England, Wales and Scotland, but the carmaker says drivers must keep their eyes on the road.

Asked by the Today program guest editor Top Gear’s James May if an autonomous car driving him from the pub was a fantasy, Ford BlueCruise director Charles Nolan says the technology was "certainly not there now." He adds: “I think there is a way to go. In my view the technology would need to evolve, the software would need to evolve and the regulation would need to evolve. And then the final part of it is customer acceptance and ability to pay would need to evolve.”