Norway May Soon Authorize Self-Driving Vehicle Testing
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The Norwegian Ministry of Transport is currently working on a bill to authorize self-driving vehicle testing in the country, with the intent being to submit the bill to the country’s parliament sometime in the spring.
If approved, testing autonomous driving technology on Norwegian roads would become legal sometime next year. Importantly, the bill wouldn’t authorize self-driving vehicle testing in the whole of the country, but rather just in portions large enough to attract automotive company interest, according to the Minister of Transport Ketil Solvik-Olsen.
The impetus for the bill is to make Norway appear as an attractive place to develop and test self-driving vehicle technologies, according to Solvik-Olsen.
The Minister of Transport noted in a conversation with TU at a debate on the future of transportation at the Cutting Edge Science Park in Oslo that autonomous vehicles will require much more detailed map/road data than is currently available. As such, beginning the testing in limited areas is logical, the minister said.
TU provides more information: “Transport Minister believes Norway and Scandinavia are particularly well placed to become an arena for testing new vehicle technology. … USA is in many ways a wonderful country with an impressive technical development. But we have a much greater proportion of the population that uses advanced technology. [Author’s note: This is clearly the result of the country being much wealthier per capita than the US, largely owing to its substantial oil reserves.] Transport Minister believes we must be careful [that] autonomous vehicles not [increase] traffic load. It is more than big enough already. In each private sitting there [are] on average 1.4 people.”
What the minister apparently means in that last bit is that there are already more cars on the roads of the country than is ideal, so during the adoption of self-driving vehicles, efforts should be made to ensure that the technology doesn’t result in a growth in traffic volume. In other words, it doesn’t want to see a lowering of average occupant numbers per vehicle. That is a possibility if there are large numbers of people sending cars without occupants in them on trips that otherwise wouldn’t take place, and also if people move from buses and trams to self-driving cars. Self-driving cars could well have the opposite effect, though, lowering vehicle ownership numbers and improving the effectiveness of delivery services through better coordination via a central management system.
Interestingly, the minister also noted the potential inherent in the automation of public transit — including the automation of trains, ships, and air traffic control.
Image via Tesla
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