Category: CAM

Ahead of the publication of an eagerly awaited paper on UK local government perspectives on self-driving, we spoke to two of the report’s authors about their experiences to date and the journey to widespread adoption.

Daniel Clarke, Head of Technology and Innovation at the Greater Cambridge Partnership, and Matthew Shelton, Future Transport – Services and Technologies Lead at Transport for West Midlands, are both members of the newly-formed Automated Mobility Network (AMN) – a cohort of Local Authority (LA) representatives committed to “Ensuring the development of safe, sustainable, equitable and appropriate CAM products and services that benefit the communities they may come to serve or impact”.

Dan first, how did you get involved in CAM and self-driving?

DC: “The Greater Cambridge Partnership is a collection of local authorities in the Cambridge area. The program I run looks at how innovation and technology can support the wider transport program. As part of that, in 2016, we were approached by the University of Cambridge, who were looking at automated vehicles. We had conversations specifically around the Cambridgeshire Guided Busway, which is a segregated piece of bus infrastructure, about making it a testing ground for this emerging technology.

“We very much focus on public transport, so it aligned with the work that we were doing. We got some funding through CCAV to produce a business case. We did some work with the Wellcome Trust as well, about linking their campus to a local railway station. We then applied for government funding with Aurrigo to do some actual trials. We were successful in that and we ran three of their shuttles out of a park and ride in Cambridge, into the West Cambridge university campus.

“They ran in mixed traffic with bikes, scooters, cars, the full gamut, and carried passengers. Although it was slightly curtailed because of Covid, it proved to us that people had an appetite to use these types of vehicles as part of the public transport system.

“We then went into a further round of funding with a company called Conigital. Unfortunately, that collapsed, so we went out back out into the market to look for new partners. We’re now working with Alexander Dennis and Fusion Processing. That was attractive to us because they had experience of running full-sized buses, and that’s where we want to be – it’s a sweet spot and we now have Whippet Coaches as our operator, plus some other organizations – dRISK and IPG, who are doing some virtual testing, and Anthrometric who have been doing some work for us around human factors, people with protected characteristics.

“We’re currently running a pilot with one vehicle, out of Madingley Road park and ride into Eddington, which is a new housing development, and then on to the West Cambridge campus. We will shortly be launching two brand new Alexander Dennis Enviro100AEV buses, which will run between the Babraham Road park and ride, the Cambridge medical campus (which is a really complex site with three hospitals, lots of blue lights), and then on to Trumpington park and ride.

“The purpose is to get more miles under our belt, to understand the operating cases, to push the technology so we get less and less interventions… thinking about how they could, eventually, when the legislation catches up, run in a driverless mode. That project runs to the end of March, and then we’ll be looking for additional funding to push on to a commercial deployment. That’s our ultimate goal: To get these things deployed commercially as part of the public transport system.”

Same question to Matt, how did you get involved in CAM and self-driving?

MS: “A big focus for us at TFWM at the moment is obviously the Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) World Congress, which will be held in Birmingham in 2027.

“We’ve been in CAM for over 10 years now, from the UK Autodrive project, with JLR in Coventry, through to the birth of Midlands Future Mobility. That’s our testbed project, which involves installing CAM infrastructure on nearly 300km of urban, interurban and rural roads across Solihull, Birmingham, Coventry, and Warwickshire.

“It involved a consortium including WMG, Costain, Vodafone, AVL, WIG, Amey, Coventry University, National Highways, Immense and Horiba Mira. Our role is really that of infrastructure owner and operator. It involved us putting out lots of roadside units (RSUs) – G5 wireless units, magnetometers, radar, Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) cameras, weather stations, Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) correction equipment – all to facilitate the progress of autonomy.

“There’s also Convex, the digital testbed, which was intended to become a repository for data for people wishing to test with autonomous vehicles. Those two things happened at the same time. Then Covid struck and the industry lost a bit of momentum.

“When we speak about CAM and CAVs, we tend to speak more about autonomy, but the connected part is important as well. One initiative involved working with the M6 toll and National Highways (NH) on in-vehicle messaging, investigating whether we could get messages out on the M6 Toll without having to put up gantries. That spawned a further project – developing an API with all the data that local authorities have, plus NH, creating trigger points so that once a user reaches a pre-set point they get an in-vehicle message with information about journey times, local incidents etc. The scope is very wide.

“We also ran a study alongside that to investigate how the users felt about these messages, because we were very aware that they could be distracting or irritating. The work is ongoing to add more functionality, but we have the tool now.

“Going back to the autonomy part, we also took part in Autoplex, a collaborative R&D project looking into how autonomous vehicles interact with other vehicles at blind merge. It uses radar and G5 units to ping messages about how to merge safely.

“We’ve also been working on various Horizon Europe projects, including Sinfonica on the public perception of autonomy, looking into how vulnerable users would access automated vehicles, the whole spectrum of accessibility. That consisted of lots of interviews, focus groups and stakeholder workshops – a three-year piece of work which has just finished, and we’re now part of the sister project, Cultural Road, which continues the theme in much more detail, covering various demographics within the West Midlands, and how they affect the understanding of barriers to adoption.

“We’ve been part of various feasibility studies in the first two rounds of CCAV funding, and will also be part of the third, which is ongoing. That will explore alternative routes –– new public transport routes where autonomy could potentially provide a low-cost solution.

“We’re starting to see the technology price come down, so the business case for things like the Solihull and Coventry Automated Links Evolution (SCALE) deployment project gets stronger. Again, we’re the operator, so we not only sourced staff but also did a lot of baseline interviews to gauge public sentiment. We held focus group days with Motability, where they brought some of their clients to experience the vehicle.

“We’ve also been doing desktop studies into the practicalities of new roles which came out of the AV Act, such as the Authorised Self-Driving Entity (ASDE). With the introduction of bus franchising into the West Midlands, we see autonomy as an integral part of future procurement frameworks.”

What are some of the most challenging aspects you’ve encountered as we look to remove the safety driver in 2026?

DC: “For us, some of the biggest challenges have been less about the technology and more around running automated vehicle pilots in an urban environment with multiple landowners. Putting in place legal agreements (licenses to operate on that land), and ensuring the domain works, has taken a long time.

“Bearing in mind that the aim is to run a popular service, some of the hardest questions to come out of our deliberative workshops have been around perception. How do we give people the confidence to use these vehicles?

“As we begin to expand out, looking at things like rural routes, there are questions like: How do we make people feel safe at night if there’s no driver? How do we ensure there’s equity of access? How do we get people on and off the vehicles?

“The technology still has some issues, but it has come a long way and will continue to evolve. Ever since our pilot with Aurrigo, several years ago now, that’s been less of a concern. The early running has given us confidence that the technology will get there.

“The next step is taking out the safety driver. That will really bring to a head some of the issues around passenger interaction. Then there are issues around the infrastructure.

We can’t start building private 5G networks all over the place, so we need remote operations which are able to utilise the existing networks. Taking out the driver makes the business case a whole lot more interesting, but it presents a whole new set of challenges for us as a local authority.”

MS: “I agree pretty much entirely with what Dan’s mentioned there. I think as local authorities we’re not so concerned with the technology itself. We’ve got confidence in it. What we’re concerned with is bringing the users with us from day one. That’s what we’ve tried to do with SCALE. When we conducted the initial surveys, 65-70% of the people we interviewed had very little trust in the technology. Winning that trust is a challenge. It needs familiarisation. The more people see the vehicles out there, the more trust they will have.

“Consistency is so important. For the last few years, we’ve gone through periods of testing where people see the vehicles out there, then periods where they don’t. There might be safety checks going on behind the scenes, or a lull in funding, but the public don’t see that. We need to have vehicles constantly riding around to get that continuous effect – an increasing positive impact.

“We don’t see this yet as a replacement for traditional bus services, we see it probably for last mile or campus environments first. It has its own use cases. We see it as another mode in the transport toolbox. The real challenge is trying to make the business case stack up. Taking the safety driver out is meant to help with that. We know it’s not going to be easy. The technology cost is still really high. If you take out the safety driver, can those people be redeployed as remote operators? Is it better to still have a member of staff on board, to add that element of security and safety?”

Finally, tell us about the new Automated Mobility Network…

DC:“After we were awarded the deployment funding, we found it really useful to chat to other people doing similar things in different parts of the country. Initially we would meet up informally at CCAV events, to exchange findings, lessons learned, barriers, generally help each other to navigate the competitions. That gradually turned into a monthly or bi-weekly phone call. Now it has been formalised into the Automated Mobility Network (AMN). It’s testament to the local authorities working in this area, the way we’ve fostered this kind of collaborative spirit.”

MS: “Between us, we’ve got a lot of information and some really good use cases. We want to feed that advice through to other relevant bodies, like Zenzic, and to provide a central repository that other local authorities can visit to get information. TFWM has published previous studies on our website, so it’s available to everyone. The role of local authorities in things like robotaxi licensing promises to be very interesting. A key aspiration for the AMN is to be more collaborative nationwide, all aiming for the same outputs and achievements.”

So, there you have it! The views from the local authority experts running both our 2024 and 2025 Self-Driving Vehicle of the Year award winners. Special thanks to Colin Maltby for organising. Please note: the AMN report we mentioned at the start has now been published. We’ll bring you a separate story on that soon, but you can read it in full here.

A huge thank you to everyone who helped make the third annual Cars of the Future Self-Driving Industry Awards the biggest and best yet!

Supported by an array of prestigious partners – BSI, CCAV, Cenex, ITS UK, PAVE UK, Tech UK and Zenzic – along with our charity partner this year, BEN – it brought together inspirational global leaders and showcased a spectacular selection of automated vehicles.

Special thanks to Chris Curtis MP, Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Self-Driving, who presented the flagship Vehicle of the Year award to the all-new Enviro100AEV bus by Alexander Dennis and Fusion Processing.

Check out this highlights reel from the presentation ceremony at the Turner Contemporary in Margate on Friday 24 October 2025…

For more on #sdia25 – including a full list of winners – please click here

Self-Driving Media Coverage

Here’s some selected media coverage of #sdia25. In particular, we were very proud to display such a great range of vehicles, including the Enviro100AEV, the evolvAD project Nissan LEAF, the Ohmio LIFT shuttle and the Starship delivery robot. The feedback was universally positive, as you can see…

“The art of autonomous motoring” Transport Xtra

“Margate hosts 3rd annual Self-driving Industry Awards” KMTV

“Welcome to The Future” Insurance Edge

“Enviro100AEV Bus wins 2025 Vehicle of the Year” Movemnt

“Alexander Dennis Enviro100AEV wins at Self-Driving Industry Awards” Route One

“Alexander Dennis and Fusion win Vehicle of the Year” Highways News

“Fusion Processing wins double honours at Self-Driving Industry Awards 2025” APN News

“Self-driving ‘Vehicle of the Year’ is coming to Cambridge’s roads” Greater Cambridge

“Automated Enviro100AEV wins award for Alexander Dennis” SMMT

“Cars of the Future Names Enviro100AEV Vehicle of the Year” Bus News

You can also check out highlights from previous years – 2023, 2024

Coming Soon…

The Awards will return in 2026 to once again celebrate excellence in automated mobility, in the UK and internationally.

Building on the success of her forward-thinking children’s books, notably 2024’s The Digital Adventures of Ava and Chip: Self-Driving Car, Beverly Clarke MBE invited us to Parliament on Monday to celebrate the launch of a new book, The Tech Career Coach For Teens.

While the book itself is brilliant, packed with top tips and relatable real-life success stories, there is a bigger picture – helping young people become better informed and more engaged digital citizens.

The automotive industry is no stranger to skills gaps, in electric vehicle (EV) and advanced driver assistance system (ADAS) maintenance and repair, for example. To address this, the charity Clarke founded, Technology Books for Children, encourages kids to see tech as fun.

Self-driving skills

The two MPs in attendance – Dawn Butler, MP for Brent East in London, and Tony Vaughan, MP for Folkestone and Hythe – shared their own experiences with fast-evolving tech, and reaffirmed their commitment to inspiring the next generation.

Having worked as a computer programmer, Butler highlighted the importance of cybersecurity in the age of AI. Vaughan, a lawyer by trade, highlighted the growing importance of information science qualifications.

Clarke then took centre stage, reflecting on the magic of reading in stimulating the imagination, and praising the expertise of her co-authors – Rebecca Franks, co-founder of Flip Computing, and computer scientist, Dr Tracy Gardner – along with Trustees Sarah Zaman and Abena Akuffo-Kelly.

“The UK tech sector is already growing at three times the rate of the rest of the economy,” said Clarke. “Tech is where the jobs are going to be – in AI, online safety, robotics, and new areas that don’t even exist yet. By encouraging children to read tech books for pleasure, we’re helping to make digital literacy a key part of their learning journey.”

Following short presentations by the aforementioned Trustees, came a Teen Panel – firsthand, no-nonsense appraisals of the current shortcomings in tech education in secondary schools.

Speaking to them afterwards, they all expressed an interest in self-driving, which chimes with the findings of our Venson-backed visit to Tiffin School 6^th form back in March.

They also agreed that they’d love to try programming small autonomous robots in the classroom, something Kenneth Clarke of Silvera is working to make happen. Watch this space!

Stardate March 2025. A joint venture between vehicle fleet management provider Venson Automotive Solutions and Tiffin School has led us to a classroom of intelligent looking 16-17 year-olds primed to discuss self-driving.

Encouragingly, although none have yet encountered one, they are all familiar with the concept of robotaxis. Some are aware of the global leader, Waymo, the company formerly known as Google’s Self-Driving Car Project. This is more than can be said of the 1980s television series Knight Rider, which is apparently not a good reference point for the children of millennials!

Following a brief overview of the situation – Waymo has completed over 20 million miles of autonomous driving in America, reportedly with 73% fewer injury-causing crashes than human drivers, while tech giant Baidu is leading the way in China, and the UK government is preparing to authorise on-road testing without a safety driver – the debate sparked into life.

Self-driving debate

“Robotaxis will presumably work like Uber, right?” ventured our first student speaker. “You’d call down a car from your position, it will take you to your destination, and companies will compete for the fastest arrival times. If these self-driving cars are constantly moving, won’t that lead to more cluttered roads?”

A second student quickly retorted: “Self-driving will be a new way of getting about. At the beginning, like all new technology, there will be problems like congestion, but over time people are probably going to find less need to have their own car, less need for parking spaces.”

It was a strong start. Interesting that we began with traffic flow rather than safety, but that vital topic soon reared its head: “Initially with self-driving cars, it’s going to be hard because people might not feel particularly safe, potentially don’t have control.” Around three quarters agreed they’d only go in an automated vehicle if their friends did.

One incisive interjection followed another…

“I know that Waymo and Tesla, even though they’re industry leaders, have both had incidents. A Waymo in America just started doing circles. There was a Tesla that didn’t recognise cones.”

“On these kind of edge cases, over time, companies like Waymo and Tesla will collect millions of miles of data – that’s going to be used to train the machines here to get better. With the growth of AI, it’s going to exponentiate. It might not be in two years or five years, but I think we can expect good results.”

“Maybe younger generations put emphasis on productivity, on being able to do two things at once. If your car is self-driving, you can scroll on TikTok.”

“Our generation will likely to be more open to the idea of AI taking control in more aspects of our lives. We will sort of become conditioned towards it.”

“If you look at current AI models like the transformer architecture, the technology is past what anyone could have thought. I think the likelihood of deaths will be very low. Instead, we can save lives.”

Wider context

In under an hour, the students covered a lot of the key points repeatedly raised at future mobility events.

On private ownership: “It’s actually better to not own a car because maximising the amount of people we’re carrying around is just so much better for the environment.”

On sustainability: “For powering electric cars, the source needs to be clean otherwise it defeats the entire objective.”

Final question, by show of hands: How many of you are more interested in the motor industry than you were when you walked in? Answer: 100%.

Alison Bell, Marketing Specialist at Venson Automotive Solutions, commented: “As set out in our recent white paper, The Journey Towards Full Driving Automation, driverless cars promise to transform fleet operations.

“Some incredible new technologies are now very close to being market-ready, and the legislative framework is taking shape. It was reassuring to discover that the Tiffin students were not only well-informed about self-driving but actively excited by the prospect. Their knowledge was impressive and their positivity inspirational.”

Please note: the author produced an earlier version of this article for The Institute of the Motor Industry’s MotorPro magazine.

As co-founder of ARIBO AV, and Global Automated Mobility Lead at Arcadis, Corey Clothier is one of the world’s most experienced and respected self-driving consultants.

With the CAM Pathfinder programme designed to move the UK from R&D to commercialisation at pace, who better to advise on a winning approach.

What is ARIBO and how did it get started?

ARIBO is a small but mighty team helping airports, cities, and campuses of all kinds deploy autonomous vehicles. We launched the company to close the gap between flashy AV demos and the grounded reality of safe, scalable deployments.

I’ve spent 16+ years bringing brilliant teams together to make autonomous innovation real. We’ve supported over 70 AV projects globally — from airlines and airfields to smart cities and defense sites. ARIBO is also a family firm. Our COO, Katie Clothier, has led AV programs for more than 11 years.

You call yourselves AV integrators. What does that really mean?

We’re the bridge. AVs don’t deploy themselves. They need integration with infrastructure, operational protocols, safety frameworks, and the right people and systems. Sometimes they even need new digital or physical infrastructure. We build the ecosystem that makes autonomy operational. It’s a team sport, and we’re proud to be the glue.

What does this work look like in practice?

One major project involves supporting a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) funded demo that integrates: 1) Autonomous bots for security; 2) Foreign Object Damage (FOD) removal; and 3) Grass maintenance at a mid-sized US airport.

All three come together under a single command-and-control system, aligned with the core safety management system. We’re also leading the AV strategy for a large US airport, helping leadership define use cases and developing a phased roadmap.

Those are two big ones, but an important ingredient in ARIBO’s success is the diversity of our partners. From amusement park logistics and forestry trucking to automated transit networks, the learning flows both ways. We are constantly applying and sharing best practices to build a larger, safer and smarter AV ecosystem for everyone.

What advice would you give to organisations just starting out in self-driving?

Start small, but start smart. Our AV101 program gives leaders a structured, hands-on way to understand the tech, assess readiness, and map a realistic path forward. For more developed projects, AV Pathfinder delivers deeper feasibility and Return on Investment (ROI) analysis. Both help leaders take action with confidence.

What excites you most about where this industry is headed?

Autonomy is no longer sci-fi – it’s happening now in airports, logistics, transit, and beyond. If done right, it solves workforce gaps, improves safety, and modernises critical systems. But it only works when developers, operators, planners, and safety experts come together. We love being the ones who help make that happen.

We’ve built a trusted team that’s high-impact, mission-driven, and agile – a tight crew of engineers, safety pros, and program leads. With decades of experience, we help our clients turn autonomy from theory into reality.

With Waymo announcing its intention to launch a “fully autonomous ride-hailing service” in London next year, who better to give us the lowdown on the US self-driving giant than Joel Johnson, AKA JJRicks, the YouTuber who shot to fame documenting the company’s operations in Phoenix, Arizona.

“As a tech and robotics enthusiast, I’d been aware of Waymo since they were the Google Self-Driving Car Project,” he explained. “In late 2018, they announced they were going to launch Waymo One in my local area, Chandler, so I emailed them immediately saying I NEED to be involved.

“They messaged back saying sign up for our waitlist, so I did. Six months went by and I’d kind of forgotten about it. Then the email arrived: ‘Congratulations – we’d like to invite you to join the early rider programme’. At that point they had their Chrysler Pacifica minivans with a safety driver. I took some of my first rides, and it was pretty fun, but it was all under a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA).

“People on the internet were asking: What’s the deal with this stuff? How does this work? But there was nothing I could do. I asked Waymo if I could be in their public program with no NDA and they said ‘Yes’. But then, in March 2020, came Covid, so I didn’t take any rides for seven months.

Full self-driving

“Finally, on 8 October 2020, they opened completely driverless, no human in the car for the first time – because of Covid. I went out and filmed my first video and people on the self-driving cars subreddit were so excited for it. They wanted to see the app, how you hail a car, basic things like that.

“From the start, I tried to give it challenges – throw it into a dead end so it has to do a three-point manoeuvre, stuff like that – and that became the theme of the series – to see if I could get it stuck or do something interesting. I only planned on making two or three videos, but every one got such a strong positive reaction, I kept going.

“There were three glorious months where Waymo was technically public, but they had a long waitlist. I was one of the only people being very vocal online about my access, so I had all sorts of interesting people fly-in wanting to take rides in that very early service with no human in the seat. People came from all over the world, from Google and competitors, university professors. It was really an incredible time.”

To date, Joel has recorded 199 videos on Waymo alone, plus a few on Cruise (before they got cancelled), Zoox and Tesla.

“I don’t think Tesla FSD counts as real self-driving,” he’s quick to clarify. “The Waymo one that went international was Waymo video number 54. It went to make a right turn and couldn’t quite do it, so it stopped, blocking a high-speed road in a construction zone. All sorts of hilarity ensued. The rescue crew showed up and it ran away from them on multiple occasions. It was a comedy of errors. That ended up everywhere, including on the BBC.”

In a lovely piece of serendipity, we realised during the course of our conversation that it was 8 October, five years to the day since Joel’s first solo ride. So, what’s the state of play today?

“Over the years Waymo has gotten better and better, especially at pick-up and drop-off,” he said. “There’s still a little way to go but they’ve improved in all aspects by absolutely leaps and bounds. At this point, the videos have started to feel a little redundant. I get in the car, it drives, and that’s it. I’m gonna make Waymo 200 the last one for a little while, until they’ve got something new and amazing to show off. Maybe I’ll make it in the UK.”

For a longer version of this story, with more technical details, we thoroughly recommend Joel’s 10-minute read: The Journey from Experiment to Everyday Autonomy

Who’s up for a crowdfunder to get JJRicks to London next spring?

Completing a great doubleheader, the day after the Zenzic CAM Pathfinder Launch, we made our way to the Royal Automobile Club in London for a PAVE UK Luncheon with Professor Missy Cummings.

Following a brief welcome by Prof. Kerry Kirwan, of the University of Warwick, came the headline act. As most readers will surely know, Cummings is a former US Navy fighter pilot, now close colleague of our 2024 Self-Driving Industry Legend, Professor Phil Koopman.

Currently Director of Autonomy and Robotics at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, having previously been a senior adviser to the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), she is best-known as an outspoken critic of Tesla’s reliance on camera-based vision.

Not full self-driving

“The world’s richest man doesn’t like me very much,” she said, regarding a 2025 court case in which Tesla was ordered to pay US$243m in damages following a fatal crash involving its Autopilot system back in 2019.

She subsequently received death threats from Elon Musk supporters online, but she’s not backing down. Maximising automated mobility safety is her life’s mission.

Much of the content was common to her recent presentation at Safecomp 2025 – see video below – augmented with aspects unique to the UK. This included praise for our EuroNCAP vehicle assessments, the standard of our driving test, and our more tightly regulated approach to on-road rollout.

“In America we run right ahead and do dumb stuff when sometimes it is better to be Number Two,” she said. “You’re about to benefit from us being first.”

Presenting data on US AV crashes involving Cruise, Waymo and Zoox vehicles, she highlighted an increased risk of rear-end shunts compared to human-driven cars.

“How generalisable is computer vision trained in the US, for the UK? No one knows!” she said. “My first question would be: How much training have you done on our roads?”

The badass quotes kept on coming. Leading UK operator Wayve was “kindergarten compared to Waymo”. Is there even such a thing as a self-driving car, given that every one has a human operator, either on-board or remote?

Giving a graphic description of the screams of a pedestrian being heard in a control room, she emphasised the need for a “big red button”, and criticised long distance remote driver operations, noting that milliseconds of delay can be crucial.  

Cruise, of course, folded, but might be making a comeback under one of Cummings’ former students.

Highlighting a recent case where a Waymo car turned across a lane and froze – ‘bricked’, in American parlance – she wondered how long it would take for road rage to kick-in if such a scenario was repeated in London.

Then there’s Unexpected Actions by Others (UAOs), which self-driving cars are bad at responding to because “AI does not think, is not capable of judgment under uncertainty, is just linear algebra on steroids… which is why you will always need human oversight.”

Something as simple as rotating lights, for example, cause big problems for AI, because they are constantly changing, leading to epistemic uncertainty – inaccurate measurement – not to mention aleatoric uncertainty – processing issues.

“All neural nets hallucinate,” she warned, on the subject of phantom braking – advanced cars automatically slamming on the anchors for apparently no reason.

Self-driving Q&A

During the Q&A session, including questions by Dr Richard Saldanha of Queen Mary University and Dr Jack Stilgoe of University College London [Was everyone there an eminent academic?!], Cummings asserted that, while communication with infrastructure could be highly beneficial, “successful AVs must be able to be fully self-contained at all times.”

There followed a fireside chat, hosted by PAVE UK’s Prof. Siddartha Khastgir, and featuring Prof. Sarah Sharples, former Chief Scientific Adviser at the Department for Transport.

Sharples relayed her own ‘scary’ experience of phantom braking, saying it was currently impossible to say which was safer – Level 4 autonomous cars or Level 2++ cars, driven by humans aided by advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) – due to a lack of real-world data.

“We need that data to be shared because at the moment we do not have the evidence base,” she said.

Summing up her pragmatic approach, Cummings concluded: “I’m a big fan of technology but in the US it’s not ’til you hit someone in the wallet that they start listening.”