China Bans Highway Testing Of Self-Driving Cars Temporarily.
Now Self-driving cars are no longer welcome on Chinese highways. As per the new report from Bloomberg, the country's auto industry is working with police to make new regulations for autonomous vehicles -- and automakers have been told to keep self-driving vehicles off the road till they go into effect.
Many companies are hard at work developing self-driving cars that will one day remove the need for us to drive ourselves from one place to the other. Still, a lot of work remains to be done and there are many challenges on the legal and regulatory front as well that must be addressed before these cars of the future can take to the roads. China has decided to apply a ban on testing self-driving cars till it passes applicable regulations.
The declaration isn't too much of a surprise -- autonomous cars have been facing new inspection following a fatal Tesla Model S crash last month. China isn't the first country to react, either: Germany is said to be recruiting legislation that would place "black boxes" in self-driving vehicles. China hasn't said when the new rules would be official but noted that early drafts have already been written.
China’s move comes as the U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx declared plans to release new strategies for the ongoing development of self-driving vehicles later this summer.
During a speech in San Francisco, Foxx repeated that the goal should be to safely test and advanced autonomous technology, but not to do the final at the expense of the former.
“We want people who start a trip to finish it,” Foxx said. And while “Autonomous doesn’t mean perfect,” he cautioned that, “We need industry to take the safety aspects of this very seriously.”
Major car makers like BMW have already prepared strategies to test self-driving cars in China. In April, Volvo said it would start discussions with Chinese cities that want to test Volvo's autonomous cars using local drivers. The company required using up to 100 cars to see how they work in everyday road conditions.
In the US, semi-autonomous car technology has come under fire resulting the deadly accident of a Tesla Model S in Autopilot mode. Tesla has denied any wrongdoing, repeating that Autopilot is semi- and not fully autonomous and promising an upgrade soon, but regulators are examining.
Hopefully, the new rules will be finalized soon and enable China's automakers to resume testing.