UK announces plan to put driverless cars on the road by 2015

The UK announced an initiative to fast-track the adoption of driverless cars, with £10 million to be made available to develop the technology. The Technology Strategy Board will select three cities to host trials lasting between 18 and 36 months, from January 2015.

The initiative, “will see driverless cars take to our streets in less than six months,” said Vince Cable, Business Minister. To date, trials of driverless vehicles in the UK have been restricted to private land.

Driverless cars are equipped with GPS to guide them on their route, and cameras and sensors that make the vehicle aware of objects and other vehicles around it. Autonomous features have been steadily creeping into traditional cars, with functions such as adaptive cruise control with steering assistance and guided parking becoming more common.Self-driving car evangelists hope automation will eliminate many traffic accidents caused by human error and ease congestion.

But there is an uphill climb to commercialisation. Concerns about legal and insurance issues will complicate re-writing the rules of the road to accommodate new vehicles. Getting the technology to a price people can afford will also be a big challenge.

The UK has various groups already working on driverless car technology, including at the University of Oxford and the engineering firm Mira. Elsewhere in Europe, Berlin's Free University and the University of Parma, Italy have been working on autonomous models.

British cities that are interested in becoming test areas have until 1 October to bid.

Traditional carmakers versus internet giants

Germany, Italy, Sweden and France, which all have high-end car industries, are pushing for a European framework that would enable the sale of such vehicles.  

An amendment to the United Nations Convention on Road Traffic, agreed in April this year was a good start. In the original text, the treaty said, “Every moving vehicle or combination of vehicles shall have a driver.” New laws would allow a car to drive itself, as long as the system, "can be overridden or switched off by the driver". A driver must be present and able to take the wheel at any time.

The Swedish city of Gothenburg has given Volvo permission to test 100 driverless cars, although that trial is not scheduled to occur until 2017. Last year, Mercedes-Benz announced it had successfully driven 103 kilometres from Mannheim to Pforzheim in Germany using driverless technology.

In the US, driverless cars have been tested on public roads in California, Nevada and Florida. Google’s driverless cars have clocked up more than 500,000 kilometres on California’s roads alone. In May the company announced it would produce 100 prototype driverless vehicles without steering wheels or pedals.

Google’s Chinese counterpart Baidu, is also developing a smart car. Unlike Google’s prototype, Baidu’s vehicle will have a steering wheel and aims to assist, rather than replace drivers. Meanwhile, General Motors, Toyota, Nissan and Audi are all working on fully autonomous cars.