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Japan May Be First Country To Have Self-Driving Cars (theoutline.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Outline: The Olympic Games are an international muscle-flexing competition, where countries show off their technological, architectural, and (oh yeah) athletic prowess to the rest of the world. Now, according to Reuters, Japan is promising a public system of self-driving cars in time for the for the 2020 Olympics, which it's hosting in Tokyo. Japan Prime Minister Shinzo Abe announced Monday that the investment company SoftBank Group is investing $2.25 billion in order to develop the Cruise, the self driving car acquired by General Motors back in 2016. The country's goal is to have a fully functioning self-driving car system in time for the 2020 Olympics, and a more developed, privatized commercial self-driving car system by 2022. The Cruise has been tested in the U.S. since 2017, but Abe said that it would also be tested on Japanese roads by the end of this fiscal year.
I think they can do this, but I bet the self-driving cards will be strictly limited to pre-computed routes.
Also I would expect the routes to be augmented to accommodate self-driving cars. And not on the freeway.
The thing about driving in Japan is that off the freeways and major roadways space becomes incredibly restricted. Taxis (which are all very good) will take you down neighborhood streets so narrow that you can reach the vending machines on the side of the road from inside the taxi.
For all of that they know how to follow rules there. If anyone can do this they can.