Britain steers towards a “driverless” future – UK to allow driverless cars on public roads in January 2015
Today the British government has announced that testing of automated cars will be allowed on public roads from January next year. The tests are then intended to run for between 18 to 36 months. What more innovative is the approach they have taken to doing this. The government has invited cities to compete to host one of three trials, which would start at the same time. Cities interested in hosting the trials have until early October to declare their interest and the Department for Transport has created a £10m fund to cover their costs (BBC says the sum to be divided between the three winners but not sure what the criteria would be for this split). Quite novel! Good to see the British government pushing the envelope on its road safety agenda using the driverless cars. Hope this nudges other EU countries (and the rest of the world) to get their act together and pave way for the automated vehicles.
