He highlighted how the RTA’s journey in self-driving transport began as early as 2009 with the inauguration of the Dubai Metro - a fully automated driverless mobility mode with an average daily ridership of 650,000 riders. He made these remarks in a keynote address at the main session of the Global Manufacturing and Industrialisation Summit (GMIS) held at Expo 2020 Dubai. “The second is ‘fostering new modes of transportation’ and the third is legislation, which entails enhancing new legislation to support futuristic modes of transportation such as self-driving vehicles and E-scooters,” explained Al Tayer. UAE video: Royal takes ride in region's first driverless bus.Self-driving vehicles in UAE: The journey so far.“The first is infrastructure, which entails upgrading the transport infrastructure with technologies capable of supporting future modes and trends in transportation, such as the landing areas of autonomous air vehicles, adding smart sensors and upgrading control centres. The future of transportation is based on three main enablers, he added. He admitted that the adoption of these futuristic modes of transportation is associated with various challenges like “potential accidents, technical failure, lack of readiness of infrastructure and difficulty with public acceptance”. “In cooperation with global firms, the RTA is piloting several self-driving transportation modes, including the autonomous aerial taxi, Dubai Sky Pods and the E-scooter,” said Al Tayer. Mattar Mohammed Al Tayer, director-general and chairman of the Board of Executive Directors of the RTA, said the authority also tested autonomous robots for logistics during the Dubai World Challenge for Self-Driving Transport this year and trialled self-driving buses.