Translated material
Robot on the road: driverless cars will be allowed to drive on Russian streets from 2019
For the first time in Russia, there will be a legislative basis for the use of driverless cars: the Ministry of Industry and Trade has published a draft government resolution permitting the experimental use of driverless cars on public roads in Moscow and Tatarstan in 2019–2022.
- The experiment should start as early as March 1, 2019. A driver should be behind the wheel of the car in unmanned mode, monitoring its operation, his actions should be recorded on video, he should be able to switch the car to manual mode without removing the seat belts. In addition, the driver should have a waybill with the route, previously sent to the Federal State Unitary Enterprise NAMI and the Ministry of Internal Affairs.
- The terms of the experiment, according to the project, limit the number of participants to large companies. The company that owns the drone must have an authorized capital of at least 100 million rubles, each car must be insured for 10 million rubles in case of an accident. All parameters of the drone and the time of its travel must be agreed upon with the state scientific center FSUE NAMI and the State Traffic Safety Inspectorate.
- There are several large companies in Russia involved in unmanned vehicles: Yandex, which is testing its own unmanned vehicle based on the Toyota Prius, KamAZ (the unmanned electric bus "Shuttle" ) and the bus manufacturer Volgabus ( the bus "Matryoshka") . KamAZ's former partner in the unmanned program, the head of the company Cognitive Technologies Olga Uskova, indignantly told Kommersant that the draft resolution "was prepared in the interests of several large companies, including Yandex" and will cut off dozens of small Russian startups from the market.
- Specific areas in Moscow and Tatarstan where drones will be allowed to operate have not yet been specified. Yandex is currently testing its drones in Innopolis, 40 km from Kazan, although in early 2018, a Yandex drone drove onto the streets near its Moscow office — the traffic police later stated that the trips had not been approved.
- Setting up experimental zones for testing driverless cars on public roads is a common practice worldwide. The most famous example is the US state of Arizona, where driverless cars have been tested for over a year. The experiment was supposed to start in California in early 2018. After an accident involving an Uber driverless car that killed a pedestrian in March, it was postponed, but is now being resumed .
What do I get out of this?
It is clear that driverless cars are the future, and not that distant. But during the experiment, we will certainly face the kind of heated debates about regulation and ethics of artificial intelligence behind the wheel that have long been going on in the West — for example, about who should be held responsible for accidents (hopefully without fatalities) and how.