Japan’s embrace of autonomous driving is set to take another major step forward with the creation of a lane dedicated to self-driving trucks on the country’s busiest expressway.
A section of the route between the capital city, Tokyo, and Nagoya, a city of 2.2 million in Aichi prefecture, could be reserved for autonomous haulage vehicles as early as next year.
The self-driving lane will be featured on a section of the Shin-Tomei Expressway, stretching around 62 miles between Numazu and Hamamatsu, two cities to the south of Mount Fuji, Japanese media outlet Nikkei Asia was told.
This portion of road is long and straight and has three lanes on each side, making it ideal to deploy self-driving trucks. It is not yet clear if the self-driving lane will also allow vehicles driven by humans.