Will autonomous vehicles be seen more often on Polish roads? MPs will consider changing the regulations.

In mid-June, the Council of Ministers adopted the draft amendment to the Road Traffic Law and the Act on Compulsory Insurance, the Insurance Guarantee Fund and the Polish Motor Insurers' Bureau, submitted by the Minister of Infrastructure.

As indicated in the justification for the project, the need for changes in regulations regarding the use of roads for "the needs of testing automated and fully automated vehicles is caused by the ongoing technological revolution related to the autonomy of transport ." Attention was also drawn to the demands of entrepreneurs addressed to the Ministry of Infrastructure regarding the automation of road transport.

- Research entities and companies producing modern systems for automotive vehicles based in Poland point to the lack of opportunities to test the latest technologies on Polish roads as a barrier to their development in the global value chain - it was emphasized.

Here's what exactly the amendment to the regulations assumes

As reported by the Chancellery of the Prime Minister, the most important changes to be introduced by the amendment will be:

• facilitating the testing of vehicles that use automatic steering and control functions
• enabling research work to be carried out on public roads with the participation of automated and fully automated vehicles
• introducing clear rules for obtaining permits to conduct research work, taking into account, among others, the level of vehicle automation, the number of vehicles and the area of research work.
• extension of professional vehicle registration (a special type of registration that allows companies involved in the production, testing, sale or repair of vehicles to temporarily allow them to be used on the road without the need for standard registration of each of them) to entrepreneurs who trade in used vehicles.
• conducting test drives without the need to re-register.

Will Poland become an attractive place for testing vehicles of the future?

- We need to be sure that the new ideas of scientists and entrepreneurs from the automotive research and development sector are safe on the road , so regulations enabling the testing of new solutions are necessary - explained the intentions of these changes by Deputy Minister of Infrastructure Stanisław Bukowiec.

" This is a long-awaited step towards the practical implementation of autonomous vehicles on Polish roads . This is not only a simplification for universities and research institutes, but also a clear signal to automotive companies that Poland is becoming an attractive location for conducting tests on vehicles of the future," commented Professor Marcin Ślęzak, director of the Motor Transport Institute, as quoted by the Samar Automotive Market Research Institute.

At the same time, however, Samar cites the opinion of Michał Wekiera, director general of the Polish Automotive Industry Association, who says that there are opinions that the solutions proposed by the government are too formal and not adapted to the nature of research and development projects.