On liability, the government said it will be “a company rather than an individual” that will be “responsible for the way [a self-driving vehicle] drives”, under the new legislation. The responsibilities of the developers and operators of such vehicles is to be set out in the Bill.

“Once authorised, companies will have ongoing obligations to keep their vehicles safe and ensure that they continue to drive in accordance with British laws,” the government said. “They will be required to report certain safety related data to the authorisation authority and the in-use regulator and to comply with other relevant laws, including data protection and environmental protection legislation.”

The legislation will also provide for people to be immune from prosecution when a self-driving vehicle is driving itself, but people will retain “non-driving responsibilities” – including an obligation to obtain “appropriate insurance for the vehicle”, as well as “proper loading”, and also be responsible for “any part of the journey where [they are] driving”.

Gardner said: “It will be important to see how the insurance industry reacts, as those manufacturers and service providers offering automated vehicles will want to make sure they have suitable coverage – there are no mass market policies currently available for automated vehicles. Without this, we could find ourselves in a ‘chicken and egg’ situation where the lack of insurance results in companies not putting their vehicles and passenger services on the market and insurers not having the driving data needed to calculate the necessary premiums for offering coverage for accidents in the first place.”

“Likewise, edge cases will need to be carefully considered to ensure that there are not situations where liability slips between the manufacturer or services provider and the vehicle owner or service user – such as where the vehicle owner ‘jail breaks’ the self-driving software or fails to download necessary updates. The consequences may be less severe for a mobile phone or games console but, for a vehicle travelling at speed on a public road, the consequences could be fatal,” he said.