Draft law enables autonomous driving in Germany

Germany’s federal government has approved a draft law allowing for autonomous cars to be driven on German streets, says Germany Trade & Invest, the federal economic development agency. Crucially within the law, responsibility for mishaps continued to rest firmly in the hands of the driver, but allows for the driver to hand control the vehicle to its own control system in certain situations and for certain periods of time. The draft law also stipulates that the driver must be able to instantly override or de
February 1, 2017 Read time: 2 mins
Germany’s federal government has approved a draft law allowing for autonomous cars to be driven on German streets, says 5444 Germany Trade & Invest, the federal economic development agency. Crucially within the law, responsibility for mishaps continued to rest firmly in the hands of the driver, but allows for the driver to hand control the vehicle to its own control system in certain situations and for certain periods of time. The draft law also stipulates that the driver must be able to instantly override or deactivate the system at any time.

In addition, the law would require autonomously driving cars to carry a form of ‘black box’, which would record all driving data and be decisive in disputes over liability should the autonomous driving technology fail.

Germany is already preparing to make autonomous driving a reality. Sections of public highway have been approved as live testing zones, while the country has been active in R&D. The institute for the German Economy believes Germany has registered 58 per cent of all global patents in autonomous driving since 2010.
Location Based Systems

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • Call for a new vision for ITS in America
    February 1, 2012
    An ITIF report published at the beginning of this year stated that America is falling behind other developed nations in terms of ITS technologies and their deployment to address safety, congestion and environmental challenges. The report asked for a stronger commitment from the US federal government (see 'Just crawling along', interview with senior ITIF analyst Stephen Ezell, ITS International March-April 2010, pp.NA1-NA2) in order to address what it sees as increasing disparities with other countries. The
    Read More
  • Call for a new vision for ITS in America
    February 6, 2012
    Pete Goldin talks to Dr. Joseph Sussman, Chairman of the ITS Program Advisory Committee, about the state of intelligent transport systems in America
    Read More
  • Machine vision offers new solutions to old problems
    October 28, 2014
    The transportation sector is set to benefit from a far wider range of machine vision technology. While machine vision techniques have been applied to traffic management applications for some years, in some areas there can still be a shortage of knowledge about what the technology can offer transportation professionals. The image processing and interpretation functions of machine vision enables control room staff to be immediately alerted to occurrences requiring attention which, in turn, enables each person
    Read More
  • Improving the positional accuracy of GNSS road user charging
    July 23, 2012
    The European GINA project is intended to address and overcome many of the institutional, technical and public acceptance hurdles currently faced by satellite-based road user charging schemes. Dave Tindall and Denis Naberezhnykh, TRL, and Laure Dezes, ERF, write. Pay-as-you-drive Road User Charging (RUC), whereby demand (or congestion) is managed by applying appropriate tariffs in order to encourage drivers to make their journeys at less busy times, on less congested routes or even on different modes, could
    Read More

Highlighted Content