The UK government has passed a law, which will allow driverless cars to run on its roads from as early as Jan. 2015.
Driverless cars are considered the future of the motor industry and Business Secretary of the UK, Vince Cable, says that it will be just around six months that people will be able to find the first driverless cars on the streets of Britain.
A driverless car is usually fitted with radar sensors and various cameras, which help the computer in the car to communicate and drive effectively on the roads.
A driverless car does not mean that the car will be left on its own to travel from one place to another. The UK government says that all driverless vehicles should have a driver present at all times and should be able to take manual control of the car when necessary. However, the car can still drive independently using the in-built technology as well as the surrounding environment.
The new law is a step forward for the government to understand the requirements and needs to pass a law for fully autonomous vehicles in the future. Automakers are already in the process of developing fully autonomous cars; however, the decision hinges on the success of driverless cars before the government can take a decision.
David Bizley, the technical director of the RAC Motoring Services in the UK, believes that some drivers may be skeptic to give driving controls to a computer in their car. However, driverless technology is said to detect hazards more accurately than a human driver.
"The biggest question for society has to be how we manage the transition from having just a few of these vehicles on the road initially to having a mix of both driverless and driven vehicles to finally having just driverless vehicles," says Bizley.
Even though the car industry has taken a leap forward and developed driverless cars, there are still some restrictions from the governments regarding the safety of the car. The safety aspect is definitely important for government agencies; however, market observers believe that this is holding back the testing of driverless cars on public roads.
In the U.S., driverless cars are being tested on public roads for many months. Internet search engine Google is already testing prototypes of driverless cars in California. Nissan is testing driverless cars in Japan and Volvo is expecting to have around 1,000 driverless cars in Sweden by 2017.
