Automated cars are becoming a regular feature in the news, with UBER announcing late last year they will be expanding their self driving cars into their San Francisco fleet, in addition to the fleet in Pittsburgh.

So with all this ‘laser beam’ action happening over in the USA, where is Australia up to with introducing this new technology into Australia and what does it mean for the insurance industry?

Last month, Australia’s Transport and Infrastructure Council agreed to increase testing and trialling of automated cars over the next two years, to ensure that cars are safe under Australia’s unique driving conditions.

The National Transport Commission (NTC) has released a policy paper titled ‘Regulatory reforms for automated road vehicles’, which detailed a phased reform program so automated vehicles can operate safely and legally on Australian roads before 2020, with highly and fully automated vehicles from 2020.

Part of the reforms also feature some clarity around insurance coverage in the event of an accident, with the initiatives to include:

• developing national guidelines to support automated vehicle trials
• clarifying who is in control of a vehicle with different levels of driving automation
• developing a comprehensive performance-based safety assurance regime for increasingly automated vehicles
• removing regulatory barriers in Australian Road Rules and other transport laws that assume a human driver.

Earlier this year GB discussed considerations and liabilities for driverless cars and the NTC has also touched on this, stating:

“Priority should be given to ensuring eligibility for compulsory third-party and national injury insurance schemes is not unintentionally restricted by current definitions of ‘driver’ and ‘driving’ in those schemes…are not worse off than (those in) human-driven vehicle crashes.”

With all these changes coming, there should soon be more legislative clarity for the market around insurance coverage, such as CTP, with the NTC requesting federal and state governments review CTP insurance schemes, to ensure those involved in incidents with automated cars are covered by insurance.

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