China mandates unified L3/L4 autonomous driving safety standard

• The standard requires autonomous driving systems to be at least as safe as a competent and attentive driver performing the dynamic driving task.
• L3 systems must be able to monitor a driver's readiness to take over, and match the safety level of a competent and attentive driver.

China has set the first unified safety baseline for autonomous vehicles, as the sector develops rapidly.

The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said Tuesday that the mandatory national standard Safety Requirements for Autonomous Driving Systems of Intelligent Connected Vehicles (GB 44721 — 2026) has been approved and released, and is set to take effect on July 1, 2027.

The standard was approved on July 30 by China's State Administration for Market Regulation and the National Standardization Administration. It applies to M- and N-category vehicles equipped with L3 and L4 systems, and does not cover automated parking systems.

The standard requires autonomous driving systems to be at least as safe as a competent and attentive driver performing the dynamic driving task. Systems must not create unreasonable safety risks for users or other road users.

For L3 systems, the standard requires a function to monitor the driver's readiness to take over. Activation and deactivation must be safe, and there are rules for indicating states such as ready, active and exited.

Vehicle manufacturers must build safeguarding capabilities spanning design and development, production and post-deployment, across four dimensions: safety policy, risk management, safety assurance and safety improvement.

Companies are also required to conduct simulation, test-track and road testing during research and validation, and to ensure test resources and conditions meet requirements.

On user notification, manufacturers may, in addition to the owner's manual, use channels such as their official websites and in-vehicle displays to clearly explain the level of driving automation, the scope of capabilities, limitations and changes in the user's role, in order to guard against misuse and abuse.

The standard establishes a testing framework combining corporate safeguarding capability checks, safety dossier checks and confirmatory testing. Confirmatory tests are carried out by third-party testing bodies using a mix of test-track, road and simulation methods.

The MIIT tasked the National Technical Committee of Auto Standardization with drafting the standard starting in 2025.

The UN's global technical regulation on autonomous driving systems (ADS GTR), which China led in drafting, was approved and published in June 2026.

The MIIT said China's standard sets more detailed technical requirements for L3 and L4 systems, and introduces a unified, standardized test scenario framework.

China granted its first L3 approvals for conventional passenger vehicles in December 2025, going to models from Changan Automobile's (SZSE: 000625) Deepal brand and BAIC Group's Arcfox.

Guo Shougang, head of the MIIT's first equipment industry department, said last month that the penetration rate of passenger vehicles with L2 combined driver assistance has reached 70.5% so far this year, while the rate for navigation-on-autopilot (NOA) features stands at 34.2 percent.

The MIIT said it will next strengthen market access management for intelligent connected vehicles, and continue to improve supporting standards covering autonomous driving test methods and safety incident data exchange.