Trials of driverless vans will start by the end of the year in Greenwich, South-East London, the Transport Research Laboratory has confirmed.
Nick Reed, Academy Director at the Transport Research Laboratory and technical lead for the £8m Government-backed Gateway project, which develops driverless vehicles, said in an interview with What Van? that the tests “could have an even-bigger impact on the successful operation of a city” than driverless cars.
He said the TRL was “looking to gauge the public perceptions and the industry perceptions as we want to understand if companies would genuinely find this useful.
“We believe there are great benefits in the use of driverless vehicles for deliveries, and we think it will be beneficial to a city, but it needs to work in a commercially-competitive environment. We want to get feedback from the public and the industry on how these vehicles will contribute to the city.”
He added that the trials were unlikely to take place on public roads and expected the top speed of the vans to be limited to 9mph in order to comply with the code of practice on the testing of automated vehicles.
