UK consults on mandating UN R171 driver assistance in GB type approval
A six-week Department for Transport consultation would write the UN regulation on driver control assistance, the widened automated lane keeping rules and the EU's new secure-diagnostics conditions into the British approval scheme.
The Department for Transport opened a consultation on August 18 on updating the GB type approval scheme for passenger and goods vehicles. It closes on September 29.
The department proposed requiring compliance with UNECE Regulation 171, which governs driver control assistance systems, for all passenger and goods vehicles fitted with such a system. The requirement would be delivered by updating Annex XII of assimilated Regulation 2018/858. A second proposal follows a change already made to the UNECE text: a requirement for passenger cars fitted with automated lane keeping systems to comply with UNECE Regulation 157 was added to the GB scheme by statutory instrument in 2025, and the regulation has since been updated and its scope widened to cover all M and N category vehicles.
The third strand concerns access to a vehicle’s diagnostics once cybersecurity controls are in place. The consultation described Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2026/699 as primarily taking into account the implementation of UN R155 on cybersecurity, and said the changes would ensure manufacturers can apply cybersecurity measures while still providing access to onboard diagnostics information. The EU act introduces a new Appendix 4 setting out the conditions a manufacturer must meet to allow an independent repairer that access.
Britain intends to replicate Appendix 4, with one deliberate difference. The consultation stated that references to SERMI — the EU system for checking that those seeking access to security-related information are trustworthy, which Britain decided during the development of the GB scheme not to introduce — will be removed from the GB version.
Source: UK Department for Transport