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posted by n1 on Tuesday April 25 2017, @04:04AM   Printer-friendly
from the driving-automation dept.

A consortium of British companies has unveiled a plan to test driverless cars on UK roads and motorways in 2019.

The Driven group also plans to try out a fleet of autonomous vehicles between London and Oxford.

The cars will communicate with each other about any hazards and should operate with almost full autonomy - but will have a human on board as well.

Previous tests of driverless vehicles in the UK have mainly taken place at slow speeds and not on public roads.

The Driven consortium is led by Oxbotica, which makes software for driverless vehicles.

Founder Prof Paul Newman, of Oxford University, said: "We're moving from the singleton autonomous vehicle to fleets of autonomous vehicles - and what's interesting is what data the vehicles share with one another, when, and why."

The project is backed by an £8.6m government grant and involves an insurance company, which will assess the risks involved at each stage of the journey.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 25 2017, @02:17PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 25 2017, @02:17PM (#499300)

    This is turning into a horror show...

  • (Score: 2) by SomeGuy on Tuesday April 25 2017, @07:02PM

    by SomeGuy (5632) on Tuesday April 25 2017, @07:02PM (#499493)

    This is turning into a horror show...

    Specifically, it is turning in to "Idiocracy".

    The icing on the cake with that recent I-85 bridge collapse would have been if a self driving car had driven off of it (there aren't any here that I know of yet).

    Remember, the computer doing the driving won't recognize a bit of smoke as being a problem.

    Fire department stopping traffic? Yea, I can imagine how that would work:
    "We need to send out an electronic alert to shut down traffic"
    "Ok, how do I do that?"
    "Uh, load up your thing-a-majig and start this app..."
    "Eeeeh, this is taking a while to load."
    "Oh, now press ctrl-alt, then swipe...."
    "Ah, hell, its doing updates".
    "CRASH!".