Britain Will Rewrite Its Traffic Laws for Robocars’ Sake
Britain plans to rewrite its traffic laws to account for robot cars, which take an all-too-literal approach to rules.
“If everyone obeyed exactly what it said in the Highways Code, the roads would probably grind to a halt,” said Graham Parkhurst, head of an academic research program in Bristol, in an interview with the Telegraph. Parkhurst is also working on one of four pilot programs in British cities, each of which is testing out a different kind of low-speed vehicle.
Some changes will put a little more wiggle room in the law, to help robocars deal with aggressive human drivers. That way the robots won’t linger forever before changing lanes, nosing into an intersection, or laying claim to a parking spot. Other changes will redefine as legal such practices as tailgating, at least when done safely, as when robocars “draft” the car in front—a strategy known as platooning—to save energy that would otherwise be lost to air resistance.
Britain’s flurry of activity on this front follows similar pronouncements in Germany and the Netherlands, and earlier ones in Japan, Korea and various states in the U.S. Britain’s latest move goes further than any other country has to welcome driverless cars to its roads, but the competition isn’t over by any means. All these policy shifts are mainly meant to improve the curb appeal of the various governments to companies developing autonomous vehicles.
More: Britain Will Rewrite Its Traffic Laws for Robocars’ Sake - IEEE Spectrum