Look, no hands! My trip on Seoul's self-driving bus
By Nick Marsh
There is a moment on the A21 bus, at around midnight, when the man in the driver’s seat presses a small red button on his dashboard.
He smiles, then lets go of the steering wheel and lifts his feet from the pedals. The vehicle continues to glide through the streets of South Korea’s capital, Seoul, turning corners and stopping at traffic lights. No-one on board seems to notice.
“One day all the buses in Seoul will be driverless,” says Park Kang-uk, head of operations at SUM (Smart YoUr Mobility).
His company has spent the past four years developing the city’s new self-driving night bus, which authorities say is the first of its kind anywhere in the world. These kinds of buses and cars are known as autonomous vehicles or AVs.
“There are fewer and fewer people who want to drive buses, especially at night,” Mr Park says. “This is the perfect solution to help fill that void.”
The quiet night-time roads are also the ideal place to test the technology, which is still far from perfect.
There are some safety measures on board. For example, passengers have to be sitting down and must wear a seatbelt at all times.
There is also someone in the driver’s seat, who can take control of the bus in case something goes wrong. Soon, Mr Park insists, there won’t be any need for that.
