For commercial fleets, one of the most significant changes brought about by automated vehicles is also one of the simplest to describe: what happens when there is nobody in the driving seat?
We are used to a model in which responsibility starts with the driver. The driver checks the vehicle, drives it, responds to hazards and, in the HGV world, sits within a well-established system of operator licensing and regulatory oversight.
A genuinely driverless vehicle changes that model fundamentally.
The Automated Vehicles Act 2024 creates a framework for vehicles which can travel autonomously with no individual expected to take over the driving task. These are known as No User-in-Charge, or NUIC, journeys.
For fleet operators, that does not mean responsibility disappears. In many respects, it means responsibility moves further into the organisation.
From driver responsibility to organisational responsibility
It is important first to distinguish two different types of automated journey.
Some automated vehicles will still have a person in the vehicle who can be required to take control. That person is known as the User-in-Charge (UIC).
While the authorised self-driving feature is engaged, the UIC is not responsible for the way the vehicle drives. But the system may issue a transition demand requiring them to resume control.
A NUIC journey is different.
There is no person in the vehicle who can be expected to take over. A driverless delivery van operating around a city, or an HGV travelling autonomously between logistics hubs, could ultimately operate in this way.
That creates an obvious regulatory question: if something needs to be done which would traditionally have fallen to the driver, who is responsible?
The answer is a new regulated entity: the licensed NUIC operator.
What is the licensed operator?
Under the 2024 Act, a vehicle undertaking a NUIC journey must be overseen by a licensed operator.
This should not be confused with the Authorised Self-Driving Entity (ASDE).
The ASDE is the organisation responsible for the authorised automated driving system. Broadly, it stands behind the proposition that the vehicle can drive itself safely and legally when its self-driving feature is engaged within its authorised parameters.
The licensed NUIC operator has a different role. It is responsible for overseeing the operation of vehicles undertaking journeys without a User-in-Charge and for meeting the regulatory obligations placed upon it.
For a commercial fleet, the distinction can be thought of broadly as:
ASDE = responsibility for the authorised self-driving technology.
Licensed NUIC operator = responsibility for the operation of the driverless service.
That distinction is likely to become extremely important when incidents occur.
What might this mean in practice?
Consider an autonomous HGV travelling overnight between two distribution centres.
There is nobody in the cab. The vehicle encounters a situation it cannot resolve and comes to a controlled stop.
Who decides what happens next?
Or consider a driverless delivery van whose[PS1] sensor has become obscured by mud. Who was responsible for ensuring that the vehicle was fit to begin its journey?
What happens if severe weather takes the vehicle outside the conditions in which it is authorised to operate?
And who responds if the automated system reports a fault halfway through a journey?
These are no longer simply questions for the person sitting behind the steering wheel.
They become questions about the systems established by the organisations operating and supporting the vehicle.
That could mean fleet control functions, remote assistance, maintenance arrangements, journey planning, escalation procedures, incident management and decisions about whether a vehicle should be dispatched at all.
The HGV sector has an additional complication
For HGV operators, the terminology creates a potential trap.
The haulage industry already has an “operator”: the holder of the goods vehicle operator's licence.
The Automated Vehicles Act introduces the concept of a licensed operator for NUIC journeys.
They are not necessarily the same legal concept.
A business operating autonomous HGVs could therefore potentially find itself operating within two regulatory regimes at the same time: the established goods vehicle operator licensing regime and the new automated vehicle regime[PS1] .
That raises some important questions.
How will the responsibilities of the Traffic Commissioners interact with the new automated vehicle regulatory system?
What happens to traditional undertakings around vehicle maintenance, defect reporting and effective management when there is no driver conducting a conventional walkaround check?
Who within the business is responsible for deciding whether an autonomous vehicle is safe and authorised to undertake a particular journey?
And where does responsibility sit when the cause of an incident could potentially involve the vehicle operator, the NUIC operator, the ASDE, a maintenance provider or several of them at once?
Those questions will matter particularly to large logistics businesses whose operations may eventually combine conventional vehicles, automated vehicles with Users-in-Charge and completely driverless vehicles.
Vans may face an even bigger change
There is another important point which could easily be overlooked.
Many van fleets currently sit outside the traditional HGV operator licensing regime.
Driverless operation could therefore introduce a level of formal regulatory oversight which some businesses have never previously experienced.
A company running autonomous last-mile delivery vans may need systems for regulatory compliance, vehicle oversight, maintenance, incident reporting, record keeping and operational decision-making which look considerably more like those traditionally associated with regulated transport operations.
For some businesses, automation may therefore reduce their reliance on drivers while simultaneously increasing the importance of fleet governance.
Responsibility will increasingly be about evidence
For fleet operators, one practical consequence is already foreseeable.
When something goes wrong, the question will not simply be:
“What did the driver do?”
Regulators and investigators are likely to need to understand what the organisations involved did.
Was the vehicle operating within its authorised operating conditions?
What maintenance and inspection regime applied?
Were sensor faults identified?
Were safety-critical software updates acted upon?
Who authorised the journey?
What information was available to the operator?
What procedures existed for a vehicle which could no longer continue autonomously?
And, crucially, what records demonstrate the answers?
For businesses accustomed to transport regulation, much of that thinking will be familiar. Good systems, clear responsibilities, competent people and reliable records are already central to effective fleet compliance.
The difference is that autonomous vehicles redistribute those responsibilities across a new collection of organisations and technologies.
The key point for fleet operators
Driverless does not mean responsibility-less.
Removing the driver does not remove the need for somebody to make decisions about the safe operation of the vehicle. Instead, the Automated Vehicles Act begins transferring parts of that responsibility from individuals towards regulated organisations.
For HGV fleets, that new framework will have to coexist with a mature operator licensing system which already places substantial obligations on transport businesses.
For van fleets, it could introduce regulatory concepts which are entirely new.
The technology may be revolutionary.
But for commercial fleet operators, one of the most important questions remains a very traditional one:
Who is responsible for making sure this vehicle is being operated safely — and can we prove that they did their job?
