South Australia Introduces Legislation To Allow Driverless Cars

South Australia Introduces Legislation To Allow Driverless Cars
ERIN MARY Doyle
By ERIN MARY Doyle



South Australia has introduced legislation in parliament today meaning we are one step closer to driverless cars on Australian roads.

Transport and Infrastructure Minister Stephen Mullighan is looking to introduce a bill allowing the trial to be conducted on public roads. Mulligan is also set to travel to California next week to meet with Google to discuss the future of driverless cars in South Australia.

“We are taking this out to car companies and also to technology companies making it clear that we’re encouraging them to have presence here in South Australia,” Mullighan told the ABC. 

“We will require companies seeking to conduct a trial on our roads to provide the Government with a very detailed plan of operation for that trial,” he said.

“That’ll be assessed by the Transport Department, by the South Australian police department and other agencies to make sure that it’s appropriate. It’ll be published up online at least a month before the trial could commence.”

“We’ll wait to see how quickly the legislation goes through Parliament and once that bill becomes law we’ll start discussions with car companies about what sort of trials they might want to conduct on Adelaide roads,” Mullighan said.

Excitement has been building around the market of self-driving cars for a number of years now, Google has been trialing its self-driving cars since June and Apple recently announced it would be creating a driverless car.

South Australia’s Premier Jay Weatherill is a strong supporter of the initiative, when it was announced that road research body ARRB group would trail the first fully driverless cars in the southern hemisphere.

Weatherill, said in a media release: “This trial presents a fantastic opportunity for South Australia to take a lead nationally and internationally in the development of this new technology and open up new opportunities for our economy.

“It’s predicted that within just 15 years, the international driverless car industry will be worth $90 billion, so we want to encourage other global businesses to come to South Australia to develop and test their technologies.”

 




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