Where to drive? How to ensure safety? Self-driving cars are on the road in Beijing

  CCTV News:At 10: 00 a.m. on the 22nd, in Beijing Economic and Technological Development Zone, the first batch of temporary license plates for self-driving test were officially issued, and the approved self-driving vehicles began to test on the road.

  Automatic driving, safety first. Before Beijing, Shanghai had allowed self-driving vehicles to be tested in open areas. So what measures have these two cities taken to ensure the safety of vehicles, operators and people around them? In the event of a traffic accident, how should the law determine the responsibility?

  In order to ensure traffic safety, the first batch of open test roads for self-driving cars in Beijing are selected outside the Fifth Ring Road, avoiding areas where residential areas, office areas, hospitals, schools and other people have concentrated traffic. On the test roads, obvious signs indicating the road sections of the autopilot test are installed, and eye-catching autopilot test body signs are uniformly posted on the autopilot test vehicles for public identification. The test driver must pass at least 50 hours of training and be able to take over the self-driving vehicle at any time.

  Like Shanghai, Beijing’s self-driving vehicles have also passed the examination of the closed test site before the open road test. Among them, the assessment of self-driving vehicles includes perceiving the surrounding environment, reminding the surrounding traffic participants in a perceivable way such as whistling, etc. If there is a problem that cannot be handled, the self-driving vehicles need to remind the drivers in a perceivable way. The time of manual intervention should not exceed 1 minute, and parking in an emergency should not exceed 2 seconds.

  According to the evaluation method, in the test, if there are nearly 30 situations, such as traffic accidents, scrambling for roads, failure to maintain a safe distance and a safe speed during driving, the road test will not pass, and in some cases, it will be rejected by one vote.

  Previously, Shanghai stipulated that car companies must purchase traffic accident liability insurance of not less than 5 million yuan per car for self-driving vehicles applying for road test, or provide traffic accident compensation guarantee of not less than 5 million yuan. During the test, an experienced test driver with no serious violation record must be equipped in the same car to deal with emergencies at any time. Others, including vehicle procedures and road violations, are consistent with the current laws and regulations.

  Cao Guangyi, political commissar of the Traffic Police Corps of the Shanghai Public Security Bureau, said that if there is an accident, the test subject unit should bear the civil liability for compensation, and the test driver should also bear the responsibility of the driver of the accident.