Popping over to France

A friend of mine has a place in France and recently said he was loading up the car and popping over to France to do some work on his property.

This left me wondering whether it would be this easy with a driverless car.

What would happen if say you wanted to pop over to Paris for the weekend in your driverless car?.

First of all you would need to tell your car  that you are going to Paris but as soon as you do this how will your car react knowing Paris is in France and how will it deal with the following:-

1- It will know that you need your passport so will the car refuse to leave home without first requesting you scan in your passport? If so this is excellent as least you wont forget your passport again

2- It will know that you need tickets so again will the car refuse to start without first requesting you scan in your tickets? If so again excellent as you wont get to arrive at the port ticket less.

3- How will your car keep up with all the other foreign legal requirements like headlight stickers/high viz jackets/breathalysers/road passes. Whilst you could leave home without them would you need to scan these items into your driverless car before it lets you on the ferry.

4- How will driverless cars pick up on different uses of items/current affairs in the different countries/places that you are visiting i.e. a Londoner wearing a high viz jacket might very well need to be treated differently to coming across Parisians  dressed in high viz jackets.

 So what else might your driverless car need to take into account?

1- Driving on the wrong side of the road is a start but a driverless car should be able to tell that from it’s location. There are fun elements though that will disappear in the future like the joys of driving around foreign supermarket car parks on the wrong side of the road and as a result pulling out from said supermarket on the wrong side of the road.

2- Anywhere you have to pay for using the road i.e. toll road booths/petrol stations may actually require you as the car owner to step out of the car to make a payment so you better keep your fingers crossed that your driverless car remembers to allow time for you to get back in after paying or else you may see it disappearing into the distance. Curious how you would tell a driverless car that it has cocked up and it needs to go back, an interesting conundrum for the car’s computer programmer.

3- Driverless cars are likely to be punctual so how will we cope with missing out on the the usual high drama in the car as the concern levels escalate with each “what time is the ferry leaving and how far are we away”.

We did once arrive after the ferry departure time to find the ferry was still there which I am sure would have majorly confused the driverless car as its on-board computer would have been saying to it that the ferry has gone . Another interesting conundrum for the car’s computer programmer.

Also we did  make an earlier ferry once so would the driverless car let you on as it is programmed with the details of the later one and computers are so tricky to over ride.

4- How will driverless cars deal with unpredictable local drivers/bus drivers with an array of local driving habits and attitudes to foreign divers which could leave your car in sticky situations especially as dented cars can be considered the norm in some places.