DRIVEN: Insuring, Ensuring and Exporting Fleet Wide Level 4 Connected Autonomy

A fleet of six self-driving cars will navigate live traffic between Oxford and London, with their driving sessions authorised in real-time by a risk-assessment system that also handles insurance. The project tackles a fundamental barrier to commercial autonomous vehicles: how to prove a self-driving car is safe enough to engage its automated mode on a given road, at a given moment, in real traffic. Current systems lack a dynamic risk framework that can authorise Level 4 autonomy—where the car drives itself without human intervention—and simultaneously provide insurance coverage. DRIVEN integrates risk assessment directly into the vehicle’s control system, using distributed data sharing and connected learning to manage safety across the entire fleet. If successful, the project could unlock new service models for autonomous transport. The same risk framework that authorises a single journey could underwrite insurance policies, accelerate regulatory approval, and enable fleet-wide safety optimisation. This matters for infrastructure and logistics: widespread Level 4 autonomy would change how goods and people move on UK roads, but only if insurers, regulators, and the public can trust the system. DRIVEN aims to build that trust through live, verifiable trials.