Self-driving cars are the future. Many major auto manufacturers are already working on their autonomous cars while you also have companies like Google trying to make it in this space. Even though the technology has considerably advanced over the past couple of years in most countries laws have yet to be amended to allow driver-less cars on the road. Folks across the pond are now amending the UK driving code so that these vehicles can be allowed on the roads.
David Willets, the UK’s science minister, tells the Daily Mail that existing highway code isn’t enough to deal with self-driving cars. He also said that the technology would rival Google’s, which recently unveiled its first crop of self-designed autonomous cars.
Willets said that it would be British technology that will be “a lot cheaper than Google technology.” He was referring to the work on autonomous cars being done by the Oxford University’s department of engineering science.
An amendment to the United Nations 1968 Convention on Road Traffic was recently made, allowing self-driving cars on the road provided that they have a system that allows a passenger to override it or switch it off altogether. Its actually quite similar to the regulations under which Google’s self-driving cars operate at its Mountain View HQ, a simple press of a button would allow a passenger to stop the car from driving itself.
Of course it may still take a couple of years before autonomous cars become a common sight on the road. Writing up the laws to support them is certainly a step in the right direction.
Filed in . Read more about Cars.