Posted on by Pei Heng Ma
(photo credit: Bram Van Oost)

Elon Musk has announced that a fully self-driving software was rolled out to any Tesla owner in North America who has purchased the £12,000 worth feature.

However, it is unlikely to see autonomous Tesla cars roaming the streets of London anytime soon. 

The UK currently does not allow vehicles with autopilot, and in August, the government announced a £100 million safety research plan to make new legislations for autonomous vehicles by 2025. 

Goldsmiths Computing lecturer Andrew Freeman said fully self-driving cars are not ideal when the road conditions become unpredictable.

“The reality is that AVs [autonomous vehicles] need to spend lots of time on the road encountering unusual circumstances to get good at handling those circumstances.” 

Car manufacturers have said self-driving cars are safer and can reduce accidents caused by tiredness and the legislation will eventually pass as both parties have not shown objections, he said.

“I doubt that it will get through before the next election…the main global issue seems to be with deciding who is liable in the case of an accident.” 

One Londoner who regularly commutes from her home in Forest Gate to work in West London, Brooke Gibb, said she is concerned with how the autonomous vehicles will be integrated to roads designed for humans.

“The unpredictability of human error may cause concern for the safety regarding self-driving cars,” Ms. Gibb said.  

Shortly after Musk’s tweet, some twitter users expressed concerns over the safety issues surrounding Tesla’s autopilot. This has led to glitching and, in some cases, even caused serious car accidents. 

Tesla has convinced the authorities that its full self-driving feature does not actually make the car fully autonomous in order to avoid regulatory oversight.

In announcing the rollout, Tesla said in the statement: “The currently enabled Autopilot, Enhanced Autopilot and Full Self-Driving features require active driver supervision and do not make the vehicle autonomous.”