People in charge of driverless cars that injure other road users should be guilty of a criminal offence, barrister leaders said yesterday.
Failure to make it a criminal offence could result in a gap in the law, the Bar Council, which represents 16,000 barristers in England and Wales, said in a response to a consultation from the government’s law reform body.
Bar chiefs told the Law Commission that driverless car developers could be made criminally liable in circumstances where the driving system “is not fully safe”.
They also suggested that the commission consider the desirability of making driverless car users take additional training on “advanced driver assistance systems”. A person’s driving licence could then be endorsed to indicate that they have passed such training, in