British experts to develop world's first rating system for autonomous cars

The world's first rating system for the safety of autonomous cars is being developed by accident experts in Britain. Crash testers at Thatcham Research outside Reading have worked with global systems engineers, car makers and the Law Commission to draw up the safety ratings which could be applied to models in the same way as the familiar Euro NCap stars. The development comes as Mercedes-Benz in Germany announced that it will accept legal responsibility for collisions that occur in its cars fitted with an'L3' Automated Lane Keeping System, when directly caused by a fault with its technology but not when the driver has "failed to comply with their duty of care". With this news representing another significant milestone on the road towards Automated Driving, Matthew Avery, chief research strategy officer, Thatcham Research, commented on the issue of legal liability for the first iterations of the technology. The UK Government is considering legislation to permit fully autonomous driving on roads and trials have been held in several places.