House of Lords will meet this week to discuss driverless cars

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The UK’s House of Lords science and technology committee will continue its investigation into driverless cars tomorrow, with a session discussing what progress has been made in testing the tech.

There are several driverless car research projects happening in the UK at the moment, including the University of the West of England’s Venturer programme in Bristol, and the LUTZ Pathfinder Project in Milton Keynes.

The session being held tomorrow will discuss findings from the progress these projects have made, including what issues they have highlighted relating to the deployment and regulation of driverless cars. It’ll also take a look at what social and behavioural issues the projects have discovered that may crop up should driverless cars become more widely adopted.

Regulation is of course a hot topic when it comes to autonomous cars, and the science and technology committee will also be hearing from European officials and industry experts as to the extent the UK needs to align itself with future international regulation for self-driving cars. It’ll examine this in areas such as cyber security, data handling and more.

On www.parliamentlive.tv from 10.40am tomorrow, anyone can tune in to watch Claire Depré, head of the sustainable and intelligent transport unit, DG MOVE, European Commission start the discussion off.

Who will we hear from?

Also appearing will be Dr Hermann Meyer, Chief Executive Officer, ERTICO, ITS Europe,Mike Hawes, CEO, Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders, Professor Nick Reed, GATEway, John McCarthy, Technical Director, Atkins and Brian Matthews, head of transport innovation, Milton Keynes Council.

Questions likely to be covered in the first session will be based around to what extent the UK can devise its own regulations and standards and what European organisations deliver that individual states can’t deliver on their own.

In the second session, the committee will be looking at whether driverless cars can work safely and effectively on current infrastructure, and whether there has been modelling or a simulation of deployment on a network of a mixed fleet of non-highly and fully-automated vehicles.

This latest session is part of the House of Lords science and technology committee’s wider research into driverless vehicles: their uses and benefits in areas such as road transport, farming and space exploration. Until late October, it welcomed written submissions from stakeholders in this area, and is now holding discussions on the tech to examine its potential.

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