Technology has undoubtedly taken over the world, one proof of that is by autonomous cars or more commonly known as self-driving cars. If you talk about this years ago, people would just laugh at you and think that you are being ridiculous.
What most people don’t actually know is that some experiments to make this possible have started as early as the 1920s. The very first ones to take a huge step on this is Japan’s Tsukuba Mechanical Engineering Lab, although technology back then wasn’t as advanced as what we have now, they have still managed to create an autonomous vehicle in 1977.
Since then, more and more companies have spent their time and money researching and experimenting on creating the best self-driving cars and during the past few years, car companies such as Audi have officially released their autonomous vehicles.
All of these may sound so cool because of how advanced it is, but is the world ready for it? Or will the people have a hard time to adapt?
UK government reviewing the law for autonomous vehicles
UK’s Self-Driving Law
Last November, Chancellor Phillip Hammond announced that there will be autonomous vehicles on the streets of Great Britain by 2021. This is because of the three-year law review by the government, to be able to ensure safety as well as how useful it will be for the people.
This decision is conspired to be an industrial strategy since it will be a huge investment in this particular technological innovation. This law that will be reviewed for three years will be under the watch of the Law of Commission of England and Wales, as well as the Scottish Law Commission, who will be the ones to analyze everything in other to look into which traditional laws need some adjustments so that it could adapt to the driverless vehicles.
James Norman, who is the roads minister said that this is can actually be considered as a huge milestone since it is so advanced, which is why it is very important for the government to make sure that the laws and regulations will be fitting.
Once this happens, Great Britain will be one of the First Nations in the world with driverless vehicles on its streets as well as having the law that is designated for it. The United State has already started some testings but will officially have monitored tests this year.
Californians VS Autonomous Vehicles
Looks like the residents of California are not yet ready to hit the road with some self-driving cars. As of this month, there has been a total of six collisions in the state of California alone involving autonomous vehicles and that is all according to the Department of Motor Vehicles in the state of California.
One of them happened in January, wherein a resident from San Francisco confronted an autonomous vehicle while it was waiting for people to cross the road. The reports said that the person was actually shouting at the vehicle and even smashed the left side of its rear bumper leaving the tail light damaged. A similar incident happened in the same city in the same month, where a taxi driver got out of his car and “slapped the front passenger window, causing a scratch.”
NBA superstar Lebron James in an ad for a self-driving car
It started in 2015, when autonomous drive testing has been allowed in some states in America such as Washington D.C., Nevada, Virginia, Michigan, Florida and of course California. However, despite all of these reports, state regulators of California have actually already approved that self-driving cars will be allowed on the roads of the state.
According to DMV Director, Jean Shiomoto, this is considered to be such a huge step for the autonomous technology since California has some of the busiest roads in almost every time of the day. Which is why he said that safety will always be their first priority and that they are already working with some manufacturers that will be hands on these tests.
Driverless cars slowly taking over the world