The road to autonomous car development

For years, automotive companies have been working towards realizing a longstanding dream, in which selfdriving cars travel without interruption on public roads, carrying their passengers in comfort and safety to their destinations.

There have been great strides towards this new reality. Many automotive companies are already embedding software with varying levels of autonomous capability into their vehicles, although only a handful currently have made such features accessible to the driver.

Progress towards this end is not necessarily slowed by the availability of the technology used in autonomous cars – it’s already in many cars currently on the road – but more significantly by the regulation and interoperability of the technologies.

It’s well known that some companies that have made autonomous driving functionality accessible have run into serious trouble, with injuries and even fatalities among drivers and pedestrians. Terrible outcomes such as these further complicate the legal issues surrounding the development and deployment of the technology, potentially setting back the rate of development by years.