The UK wants to be a place that allows for innovation in the field of self-driving cars. So much so that they were originally supposed to be allowed on public roads already, but they had scheduling problems with the original plans. A new push will see self-driving cars on the roads as early as January 2015.
There could still be delays with the plan if history is any indication, but at the moment things appear to moving along smoothly. Some may still be concerned about the safety of a car that drives itself, but personally I’d feel a lot safer sitting in traffic with a bunch of computer-controlled cars than human-controlled ones.
Part of the plan would also set up a large testing area to let these self-driving cars self-drive around each other and out of the public’s way. That could be a huge asset for developers in the earlier stages of building these cars, but the real test is to see how they operate in traffic with human drivers. Tests so far have shown to be very promising for the safety of these vehicles, but there’s still a trust issue in getting the average person to hand over control to a machine.
(via Slashgear, image via motoyen)
- Self-driving cars are already legal in California
- Google’s self-driving car has traveled 300,000+ miles without an accident
- See video from inside one of these self-driving cars
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