Four British cities – Bristol, Coventry, Greenwich and Milton Keynes – have been selected for driverless car trials slated to begin in January 2015.
The four cities will be hosting three different projects – Greenwich and Bristol will be having a project each of their own while Coventry and Milton Keynes will be sharing a project.
The testing, slated to begin on January 1, will see Greenwich host the Gateway scheme with members including General Motors, the AA and RAC. This project will see automated passenger shuttle vehicles and autonomous valet parking for adapted cars.
TRL chief executive Rob Wallis said that they are confident that they will be able to “safely demonstrate automated vehicles to build acceptance and trust in this revolutionary technology.”
Bristol on the other hand will be hosting the Venturer Consortium project with a mission to investigate driverless cars and their role in reducing traffic congestion. The project will also investigate whether such cars will help make British roads safer while also looking at the legal and insurance aspects of this technology.
The third project dubbed UK Autodrive programme, which will see Milton Keynes and Coventry share the duties, will be testing driverless cars on the roads, self-driving pods for pedestrianised areas and technologies that may be required to be built into roads to assist such cars in navigation. The UK Autodrive programme has Ford, Jaguar Land Rover and the engineering consultancy Arup as its members.
Tim Armitage from Arup said that they are planning to “start testing with single vehicles on closed roads, and to build up to a point where all road users, as well as legislators, the police and insurance companies, are confident about how driverless pods and fully and partially autonomous cars can operate safely on UK roads.”
The decision of conduction the tests comes from Innovate UK after George Osborne’s Autumn Statement wherein he had announced an additional £9 million funding for the work on top of the already allocated £10 million.
“Four British cities – Bristol, Coventry, Greenwich and Milton Keynes – have been selected…”
Wow! When did Greenwich become a city? Also, though MK residents refer to MK as a ‘city’, it competed for formal city status in the 2000, 2002 and 2012 competitions, but was not successful.