Self-driving cars are coming to the UK

It may seem like it’s been a long time coming but self-driving cars will be hitting Britain’s roads within the next few week, and we now have a little more information regarding the up and coming trials for this amazing technology.

The self-driving car trials will begin in January 2015 in four cities, where they will be testing various types of driverless cars.

The tests will take place in Bristol, Greenwich, Milton Keynes and Coventry.

The Bristol trials will take a look at how these self-driving cars will affect road laws and insurance policies, which of course will require tweaking with these new driverless cars, however they are likely to be significantly safer than traditional manually driven cars.

The Transport Research Laboratory in Greenwich will head up the tests for driverless 10-seater electric buses but not on public roads. They will also be looking into an autonomous valet parking system and a remotely controlled system that will allow engineers to control a vehicle that has run into difficulties.

Milton Keynes along with Coventry will be where the driverless cars will be tested by a range of industry specialists including car manufacturers Ford, Jaguar, Land Rover and Tata, along with engineering firm Arup and Oxford and Cambridge University. They will test various vehicles with different levels of self-sufficiency as well as the small, self-driving pods that are intended to be used in pedestrian areas.

This will be a huge step forward in getting self-sufficient cars on Britain’s roads, however these tests will be relatively small so don’t expect to see these driverless cars even if you live in one of the fours towns.