Guidelines to ensure safe self-driving vehicle tests

China released a national guideline on road tests for self-driving vehicles on Thursday, as part of a broader drive to accelerate the development of the technology and gain the advantage in commercializing such vehicles.

The guideline, which was jointly issued by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the Ministry of Public Security and the Ministry of Transport, allows local authorities to evaluate local conditions and arrange road tests for autonomous vehicles. It states that the test vehicles should be passenger or commercial automobiles, not low-speed vehicles or motorcycles.

According to the regulation, which will take effect on May 1, test vehicles should be able to switch between self-driving and conventional driving in order to ensure the test driver can quickly take over in case of a malfunction.