United KingdomAutomated and Electric Vehicles Act 2018, Part 1, liability of insurers and owners for accidents caused by automated vehicles
Automated and Electric Vehicles Act 2018, c. 18, Part 1 (ss. 1-8)
In force since .
An AI liability rule binding public and private bodies.
- Private right of action
- Yes
- Instrument type
- an act of a legislature
As of .
What it requires
- This applies only to a vehicle the Secretary of State has listed as an automated vehicle under section 1, and it binds the insurer of that vehicle (or its owner in the public-body cases), not a software developer directly (sections 1(4) and 2).
- If you supply the software or the vehicle that drives itself, the insurer or owner that has settled the injured person's claim can recover from you wherever you are also liable to that person for the accident (section 5(1)).
- If you are an insured person, do not make software alterations the policy prohibits and install the safety-critical software updates you know or ought reasonably to know are safety-critical; otherwise the policy may exclude or limit the insurer's liability to you, and the insurer may recover from you what it paid to others to the extent the policy provides; if you are not the holder of the policy, the alterations limb reaches you only if you knew at the time of the accident that the alterations were prohibited (section 4(1), (2) and (4)).
- Liability to an injured person cannot be limited or excluded by an insurance policy term or in any other way, except as section 4 allows (section 2(6)).
- For damage to property in one accident, liability is capped at the compulsory-insurance property limit in section 145(4)(b) of the Road Traffic Act 1988 (section 2(4)).
These lines are LexLint's reading of the law's text, as of .
What this law does
Where an automated vehicle causes an accident while driving itself on a road or other public place in Great Britain, and the vehicle is insured, the insurer is liable for the damage suffered by an insured person or any other person. An automated vehicle is a vehicle listed by the Secretary of State under section 1. A vehicle is driving itself if it is operating in a mode in which it is not being controlled, and does not need to be monitored, by an individual.
Where the vehicle is not insured and section 143 of the Road Traffic Act 1988 does not apply to it because of the exemption for public bodies or because it is in the public service of the Crown, the owner of the vehicle is liable for the damage a person suffers.
Damage means death or personal injury and damage to property other than the automated vehicle, goods carried for hire or reward in or on the vehicle or a trailer it draws, and property in the custody or under the control of the insured person (where the insurer is liable) or of the person in charge of the vehicle (where the owner is liable).
For damage to property in any one accident, the liability of the insurer or owner is limited to the amount specified in section 145(4)(b) of the Road Traffic Act 1988. Except as section 4 provides, liability cannot be limited or excluded by a term of an insurance policy or in any other way.
A policy may exclude or limit the insurer's liability to an insured person for an accident that is a direct result of software alterations made by that person, or with that person's knowledge, that the policy prohibits, or of a failure to install safety-critical software updates that the person knows or ought reasonably to know are safety-critical.
For an insured person who is not the holder of the policy, the software alterations limb applies only to alterations that the person knows, at the time of the accident, are prohibited under the policy. The insurer or owner is not liable to the person in charge where the accident was wholly due to that person's negligence in allowing the vehicle to begin driving itself when it was not appropriate to do so.
Once the liability of the insurer or owner to the injured party is settled, any other person liable to the injured party in respect of the accident is under the same liability to the insurer or owner. Liability under section 2 is treated as liability in tort or, in Scotland, delict, for the purposes of any enactment conferring jurisdiction on a court.
Schedule 2 to the Automated Vehicles Act 2024 provides for a new subsection (1A) to be substituted for section 8(1) of the 2018 Act, a change listed as yet to be applied to the Act's text.
When LexLint raises it
When your app profile says your app distributes a software product.