New legislation in Germany indicates the degree of acceptance in the use of driverless vehicles. The new legislation is passed in the Bundestag which is Germany’s lower house of parliament. As per the legislation, driverless vehicles will be allowed to ply public roads across the country from 2022 onwards.
This new legal framework backs commercial operations of autonomous vehicles. Undoubtedly, companies will be attracted to this legislation, especially those companies who are focusing on autonomous commercial car-hailing and logistics services which are rapidly growing across the world.
The new legislation which is passed in Germany will allow autonomous vehicles to operate in Germany without the hitherto mandatory safety driver behind the wheels. It is worth mention that lately, a number of companies have tested the safety of autonomous vehicles with a safety driver behind the steering in Germany.
Note that the proposed legislation will only become law after it is successfully passed in Germany’s upper house of parliament. The bills will require to allow autonomous vehicles without a safety driver to satisfy all the safety requirements for such operation. Interestingly, the bill also includes proposed initial applications for driverless cars on public roads.
In 2021, so far, we have experienced a steep rise in the number of permits for self driving cars on public roads in different countries across the globe. China and the US have has already deployed some autonomous vehicles in select cities.
It is worth mention that as of now, AutoX is deploying its Robo taxi service in several countries. It has already achieved some reasonable degree of success. As far as the hype with autonomous driving is concerned, it is speculated that the bill will be easily passed in the upper chamber of the parliament in Germany. If this is true, we can see a law version of it in Germany sometime soon.
