LONDON: The government has announced that it wants to make the UK a world centre for the development of driverless cars. It said it would conduct a review next year to ensure that the legislative and regulatory framework is in place for such vehicles to be incorporated on Britain’s roads. It will also create a £10m prize to fund a town or city to become a testing ground for autonomous vehicles.
Milton Keynes is already experimenting with driverless pods. By mid-2017 it is planned that 100 fully autonomous vehicles will run on the town’s pathways along with pedestrians, using sensors to avoid collisions. The plans for self-drive cars were announced in the chancellor’s National Infrastructure Plan. Much of the hype around driverless cars centres around Google. Its self-drive car recently completed 500,000 miles (804,000km) of road tests.–Reuters