Autonomous driving: China and USA lead the way

In more and more Chinese metropolises, such as Beijing, Shanghai and Wuhan, giants of the automotive and technology industries are investing in autonomous driving projects and putting more and more self-steering vehicles on the roads. However, they were never really driverless. There was always a safety driver on board who could regain control of the vehicle if necessary. From a legal point of view, too, the circulation of such vehicles was only allowed in individual cases and with special permission.  

Now, however, the metropolis of Shenzhen, also known as the 'Chinese Silicon Valley', has gone one step further. On 1 August, a new package of laws came into force that defines the legal framework for fully autonomous driving cars. According to the new law, autonomous vehicles are allowed to operate entirely without a human passenger - but only in areas designated by the city. The question of accident liability, which has been difficult to answer up to now, has also been regulated. If an accident occurs while a driver is on board, he or she is responsible for violations of traffic regulations. In the case of fully autonomous driving, the owner or operator is liable instead.  

All of this is made possible by innovative technologies in the field of sensor technology - especially using so-called LiDAR environmental sensing - and geolocation. Often these are used to enable more precise and reliable autonomous driving. Not only in China, but also on the other side of the Pacific. Because in the United States, too, more and more projects to develop self-driving cars are gaining ground. 

Here, it is the US company General Motors in particular that is making huge strides in the world of autonomous driving. For the first time in 2020, the car manufacturer had put a prototype for its assistance system "Super Cruise" on the road, which only works on the highways approved by the company in the USA and Canada and with certain vehicle models. These restrictions will still be in place, but now GM wants to expand the "Super Cruise road network" and enable several car models to have autonomous control from 2023. Some 320,000 kilometres of new routes would be added to the map "so more and more customers can experience this convenience," says Mario Maiorana, GM's chief engineer of Super Cruise. Unlike Shenzhen, a driver here will still have to sit behind the wheel.  

China and the US, however, seem to be all in when it comes to advanced driver assistance technology. On the European continent, however, only small projects have gained a foothold. Not only because of the different levels of available technologies and data protection regulations, but also because of topographical structural challenges - which often do not favour easy construction of newer and safer road networks for autonomous driving. It could still take some time in Europe before driverless vehicles no longer sound like something out of a futuristic novel.