Car drivers and their passengers waited more than 100 years for a revolution. Then two came along at about the same time.
First, it was the arrival of pure-electric cars. But the talk is now rapidly diverting to the next big, even more revolutionary thing – autonomous vehicles.
Drivers baffled by in-car safety assistance systems
I’m comfortable confessing that I instinctively love cars and vans that can be, er, driven. Those that drive themselves I merely, and cautiously, like. Motorised vehicles with four or more wheels and purportedly requiring zero human input at point of use just ain’t appropriate for everyone on every road.
For blind or partially sighted people, folk with other disabilities or the elderly living in the remotest areas, fair enough. Otherwise, it’s a definite no from me.
I have previous with notoriously expensive self-driving cars designed to make the roads safer (possible) and drivers redundant (inevitable). I’ve served a 30-odd-year ‘apprenticeship’ as an autonomous vehicle test passenger who, on one occasion, almost doubled as an involuntary crash test dummy.
On a surreal Sunday morning close to the foot of Mount Fuji in the late eighties, scientist-like boffins introduced me to the displeasure of sitting back and not enjoying the ride from the rear seat of a slow-moving Toyota, whose front pews were hauntingly and needlessly unoccupied. Further autonomous rides in Japan, South Korea, China, Germany and North America gave me more opportunities to not sit back and relax.
