Vehicles equipped with self-driving systems will now be allowed to be tested on public roads in Portugal. After a decree-law authorising tests with autonomous vehicles on Portuguese roads was approved by the Council of Ministers at the end of April, it was published in the Official Gazette (source in Portuguese) last Monday and will enter into force next July.
According to the decree-law, autonomous driving will “enable the democratisation of mobility, promoting the inclusion of citizens who are unable to drive, due to physical or other constraints”.
At the same time, it “will make it possible to introduce new and different individual and collective mobility solutions, helping to optimise the vehicle fleet and to reduce the inefficiencies inherent in the current mobility model based on individually owned and used vehicles”, the government believes.
In practice, the decree-law creates the legal framework for public roads to be used to test autonomous driving technology, subject to a licence and compliance with a set of technical, operational and safety requirements.
The technology trials will be carried out by research laboratories, higher education institutions and companies in the automotive, infrastructure and transport sectors.
