Driverless cars given ok
Published Date: 30th Jul 2014
The Government have said that driverless cars will be allowed to drive on public roads from January 2015
Government officials have also given invited cities to compete for three individual trials of this new technology, which will also take place at the same time. Ministers have ordered a review by the UK road regulators to supply new appropriate guidelines.
The department of transport have pledged to allow self-driving cars to be trialling on UK roads very soon. The business secretary Vince Cable has revealed details of a new plan of action at a research facility that belongs to Mira, an automotive technology group from the midlands.
"Today's announcement will see driverless cars take to our streets in less than six months, putting us at the forefront of this transformational technology and opening up new opportunities for our economy and society," he explained.
Engineers here in the UK, including a group from Oxford University, have been experimenting driverless cars recently. Some concerns about legal and insurance issues have restricted the cars to private roads up to now.
Other countries have, however, been swifter to provide access to public routes. The US States of California, Nevada and Florida have all approved tests of the vehicles. In California alone, Google's driverless car has done more than 300,000 miles on the open road.
In 2013, Nissan carried out Japan's first public road test of an autonomous vehicle on a highway. And in Europe, the Swedish city of Gothenburg has given Volvo permission to test 1,000 driverless cars - although that trial is not scheduled to occur until 2017.
Cities in the UK will have until the 1st October to register their interest in a driverless car trial run. The fascinating tests are predicted to run for between 18 and 36 months. A £10m fund has been put up by the Government to be divided between the three winning cities to cover costs.
Earlier this month, the FBI warned that "driverless cars could be used as lethal weapons, predicting that the vehicles will have a high impact on transforming what both law enforcement and its adversaries can operationally do with a car".
