Recently, the Japanese cabinet passed a motion that created the “Declaration to become the World’s Most Advanced IT Nation.” The declaration states that, “by 2018, fatalities from traffic accidents will have been decreased to below 2,500, and by 2020, Japan will have achieved the world’s safest road transit infrastructure, with additional large-scale reductions in traffic congestion.” One step in this direction is ” the creation of autonomous systems and the sharing of data from vehicle to vehicle and vehicle to road aimed at the development of an advanced driver assistance system. Demonstrations of autonomous driving will be launched on public roads in advance of deployment of this system; the aim is to, by the first half of the 2020s, bring to market a semi-autonomous driving system.” Will autonomous driving really become a reality in the near future in Japan?
