Look ma, no hands! Roads open to self-driving cars

While it is several years behind some American states, Ontario became the first Canadian province to allow automated vehicles on its roads on Jan. 1, 2016.

The Ministry of Transportation has started a pilot project that would allow technology and automotive companies, along with academic and research institutions, to apply to test their self-driving cars on Ontario's roads.

Ministry of Transportation spokesperson Bob Nichols said in an email to NorthernLife.ca that while the ministry has received a lot of interest in the pilot program, it has not yet received, or approved, any formal applications.

Given the technology is evolving, a safety measure in Ontario’s pilot requires that the driver be able to take control over an automated vehicle in case an unexpected event occurs.

“Road safety is paramount in Ontario, noting other jurisdictions have used a similar approach,” the Ministry of Transportation says on its website.

Technology giant Google has tested its fleet of self-driving cars for several years in California.

The company reported on Jan. 13 that between September 2014 and November 2015, its fleet's test drivers had to take over control from the self-driving cars 341 times.

Google said 272 of the disengagements, as the company calls them, were due to “failure of autonomous technology.”

The company includes minor anomalies in its sensor readings as reasons for a human test driver to take over the vehicle's controls.

Google said 69 other disengagements were more critical, and required a driver to take over for the safe operation of the vehicle.

The company's self-driving car fleet covered 682,894 kilometres in the time period measured.

In the fourth quarter of 2014, a disengagement occurred on average once every 1,263 kilometres, but by the fourth quarter of 2015 the rate improved to once every 8,558 kilometres.

Google says it hopes to make self-driving cars available to consumers by 2020.