Depending on which country you go to, the rules for driving and the laws are all different. There is also the way that people drive that are different. For example there are some countries in Asia where drivers are known to be particularly reckless/fast, which means that when designing self-driving car technology, all of this needs to be taken into account.
The good news for carmakers, especially those in Germany, is that it looks like the country has finally made it legal for carmakers to test their self-driving cars on the roads. The law was initially mooted by Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel last year, but it looks like it has finally managed to get through.
Unsurprisingly there will be some caveats to this and that is under the law, a human driver needs to be at the wheel at all times, and must be ready to take back control of the vehicle when prompted to. The law will also require the cars to come with a black box that will record the entire journey which will come in handy when trying to decide who was to blame should an accident arise.
This law is a pretty big deal for companies in Germany, especially local ones such as BMW, Daimler, and Volkswagen, all of whom are working on the technology and will now have a place back home to test it out.
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