‘I saw the little car was accelerating, braking and turning corners all by itself ’
seemed like just another car trip - except the driver didn’t have his hands on the wheel.
Squeezing into the cramped back seat of the specially-adapted Renault Twizy, all appeared normal as Aku Kyyhkynen took me for a spin on the streets near Helsinki.
But peering over his shoulder, I saw the little electric car was accelerating, braking and turning corners all by itself. The vehicle is being used in a two-month Finnish trial over a two-mile route in suburban Vantaa.
Anyone can turn up and be a passenger, like me, in the first autonomous car test of its type in Finland. The Twizy was chosen to replicate a potential selfdriving taxi of the future.
It is being accompanied by public tests of a six-seat “robot bus” in Helsinki.
Tommi Rimpiläinen, chief operating officer of vehicle automation firm Sensible 4, which is running the AIGO trial, said it would help develop self-driving software that could be used in any vehicle.
He was convinced of the benefits, despite a pedestrian being killed by a self-driving Uber car in Arizona in March.
During my ten-minute ride, the Twizy spotted a pedestrian waiting at a crossing and automatically came to a halt.
Mr Rimpiläinen said: “There is huge safety potential - an autonomous vehicle cannot break traffic laws. I bet it will be safer than a guy who has just got his driving licence.”
However, in the trial a driver is still needed as a safety backup and for certain actions which the technology can’t yet cope with, such as operating direction indicators and negotiating traffic lights.
A van with monitoring equipment also follows behind. When the researchit ers are sure everything works perfectly, the “driver” will sit in the back seat as the next step. “There is no point in rushing,” said Mr Rimpiläinen. “Then you do a lot of damage to everybody.”
With the area’s speed limit 30kph (19mph) – much like most of Edinburgh – I felt quite safe in the back. If I’d taken Mr Kyyhkynen’s place in the driving seat, it may have been an altogether more unnerving experience.