I recently saw a headline saying you are more likely to get a computer virus from visiting a religious website than a porn website, I must check what sites I have agreed to receive mail from! A driverless car salesman when discussing security features of the car might find this a unique selling point for some customers, a concern for others and a blessing in disguise for others.
I am sure we have all at some point needed to be in two places at the same time and spent hours trying to plan ways to get around it whilst trying to minimize any upset that might result from your final decision.
If you currently have a car then take a few minutes out now and sit for a while and look at all the times you use your car currently.
Okay did your list include doing the school run, going shopping, visiting friends, parent taxiing, kids taxiing, and going on holidays…?
Now look at your list and think how a driverless car could free up your time from doing some of these trips that you currently do.
Now imagine that some of these trips without you actually needing to be in the car at all. You could instruct your driverless car to go off, do something for you and then return.
A classic example is the school run. You deposit your child into the back of the driverless car and it goes to the child’s school and drops them off and then return home. Thus freeing up your morning time to do other things or allowing you go to work.
At school pick up the driverless car parks at a designated spot and time and it then drives your child home or to any other nominated place i.e., afterschool club.
A lot of parents are now going rush out to buy a driverless car as it’s their answer to being able in two places at the same time.
Also, parents recognising the time a driverless car would free up for them during the day rather than being stuck in the car during the school rush hour.
But in reality, the question is would you really feel comfortable about putting your children into a driverless car by themselves? Are you okay trusting your child’s life and security to a computerised car rather than doing the school run yourself? I know there are some mornings when this could be seen as a godsend for some parents with the driverless car enabling them to ship off their tantruming little darlings sooner.
Driverless cars will have on-board cameras so you can monitor the child’s journey to school. Unfortunately this could stress you out if anything was to happen whilst you were not there to do anything about it. If you are taking time out to monitor the trip you may as well be doing it yourself.
Similarly, my kids have had jobs that have finished at 10/11 o’clock at night. Being a responsible parent “Dads Taxi” has been to pick them up at these times. These late-night pickups are usually at weekends and so I wonder would parents in a similar position to me send the driverless car out to do the pickup. The driverless car doing the pick would mean that “Dad’s Taxi” can instead relax at home watching the weekend film with a glass of beer rather than sitting clock watching with a mug of coffee.
There will though still be non-driverless cars on the road. There will still be people who don’t want to give up the joys of driving or just don’t trust driverless cars.
Also, there will still be cyclists on the road even one’s riding recumbent bicycles which I still can’t see the point in. There will still be the cyclists who don’t have lights or think its ok at night to go out dressed in black or both.
Also, on road there will be pedestrians, tourists, joggers, protestors, horse riders and inebriated individuals at pub kick out time.
As such there will be still be humans on the road not in cars who will either be oblivious to road traffic or will be slowing down road traffic for whatever reasons
Despite all the equipment and programming that can go into a driverless car there are still going to be when a driverless car will be involved in an accident, possibly fatal.
So, imagine being at home whilst your driverless car is out doing a pickup for you. How are you going to react if suddenly you get a call from the Police saying your driverless car has been involved in an accident?
You may find that your driverless car has already have been programmed to inform you of any accidents and also arranged for a taxi to pick you up and take you to the accident.
Driverless cars will need a lot of rules and laws governing their usage.
Will the laws allow you to send the driverless car out by itself with no occupants in it at all, i.e., doing a click and collect for you at an anti-social time?
Will there always need to be someone on-board who has passed their driving test and as such can take over the cars controls if anything should happen?
Will there need to be an adult on board in case there is an accident that needs an adult to be on site and involved in sorting it out?
There will be loads more similar scenarios that will keep governments, lawyers and insurance companies occupied for years.
Although thinking about it if your driverless car does have an accident with you aboard the chances are still would not been able to stop it in the first place. At least though you will be on the accident scene to help sort things out.
So, what happens if your driverless car is involved in an accident how will everyone work out whose fault it is? What happens if you are not on-board the car at the time of the accident does that mean that because you are absent from the vehicle that you are automatically responsible for the accident.
Alternatively, if the accident involved a non-driverless car could it be said that the human driver will always be responsible due to driverless cars being so highly programmed that they shouldn’t ever crash.
Fortunately, driverless cars will always be fitted with an array of cameras and the cars memory system, assuming it is still functioning, should be able to help determine blame. Driverless cars may need to be fitted with a black box recording system that airplanes use. The whole car crash process may take longer as interested parties will now try to determine whether the accident was due to human or computer error.
Computers as we all know can for no reason glitch, freeze or go into a spiralling loop needing human intervention that is usually cured by turning it off and on again. This might be another reason that somebody will always need to be on-board a driverless car if for no other reason than to turn it off and on again when it malfunctions.
Similarly, computers are prone to virus attacks and so again if this were to happen during a journey then you again would need someone on-board to take over the controls to minimise the risks. If the driverless car was hit by a malicious virus attack that targeted certain brands of driverless cars or certain IT systems, they were running off this could mean that the cars could instantly shutdown wherever they are causing mayhem and possible deaths on the roads.
After sorting out the car requirements what about driver requirements. Will we expect several versions of the Highway Code to need to be issued? There could be one for non-driverless road users, one for the owners of driverless cars, one for people who still want to drive including driverless car drivers and one for the driverless car manufacturers. These new Highway Codes will need to be able to instruct all road users as to what is expected of them in this new driverless world. It will also need to legislate on how all road users, humans/computers, will now have to work together to ensure everyone can travel safely on the highways together.
Driverless Cars will never take off 