Statement of intent on driverless vehicles

If you live in Bristol, Coventry, the London borough of Greenwich, or Milton Keynes, you’ll be forgiven for doing a double-take if you’re out and about in the New Year.

In his Autumn Statement last week, Chancellor George Osborne announced funding of £10m to test driverless cars in these 4 towns and cities – and there’s bound to be a fair amount of staring and pointing as locals get used to the phenomenon.

Point of interest

Sounds like I’m being patronizing, but that’s certainly not my intention. I’ll certainly stare and point the first time I see a car go by with someone in the driving seat fully engaged in reading a book or watching TV on their tablet.

It puts me in mind of my mother, gawd bless her, telling how she used to run out of the house when she was a girl in the 1920s and marvel at the planes flying into Ringway Aerodrome in Manchester (though she might have been gilding the lily when she said she and her friends used to wave at the pilot and, if they were lucky, he’d wave back).

AI AI… Oh?

The government trials are expected to last between 18 months and 3 years. The idea is to assess how autonomous vehicles fit in with normal traffic – and how human drivers adapt in turn.

But do we really want or need driverless cars? Do they not presage a world where artificial intelligence starts to take over from humans, a vision recently outlined (in less than optimistic terms) by Professor Stephen Hawking?

There are several undoubted advantages to driverless cars. First, they free us from what can be the dreary task of driving in modern Britain. In future, we will be able to sit in a traffic jam and make a phone call without fear of getting collared by the police.

Autonomous vehicles also promise to reduce fuel consumption (because they drive more efficiently) and improve safety (because they recognize hazards and take evasive action).

Cruise control

And if you think about it, we’re already a long way down the road to handing over sovereignty of our cars to computers.

Okay, we don’t live in California or the other US states,where Google’s prototype driverless vehicles are a regular sight on the road. But the shift towards autonomous cars has already begun.

Think about cruise control, which is a familiar feature of many cars and allows the vehicle to maintain a steady speed, braking and accelerating when necessary.

Park life

Many modern cars also come with self-parking functions. And crash avoidance systems that utilize sensor-enabled automatic emergency braking are also becoming more commonplace – indeed, they’re fitted as standard on an increasing number of models.

These systems might even wind up the windows or close the sunroof to lessen the risk of serious injury.

And what about those devices which alert you when you started to drift out of a lane on the motorway? Some even gently steer the vehicle back on track.

The Nissan Qashqai is among those cars which can recognise traffic signs.

Forecourt thinking

So what these trials tell us is that driverless cars are not too far from the showroom. Nissan, for example, expects to launch driverless models by 2020.

The stumbling block is more likely to be the law than the technology, as the legal implications are many and varied.

For example, who is at fault if an autonomous car runs someone over – the driver or the manufacturer?

Can you drink and ‘drive’ a driverless car? The answer is no, since you will fall foul of the ‘drunk in charge’ laws. But the fact the question can even be asked is what’s significant.

Computer Code

The government has asked civil servants to review the rules of the road. Self-drive cars will need to comply with safety and traffic laws, which will most likely involve changes to the Highway Code.

Insurance firms will also need to decide how to react to this revolution on the roads.

Many are speculating that driverless cars will initially cost more to insure as they are an unknown risk. But the premiums are likely to come down once insurers have a chance to study the claims data – which everyone expects will demonstrate that autonomous cars are intrinsically safer than ones where the controlling software is in human form.

Motoring abroad

Other countries have been quicker to give the green light to driverless cars. As noted, they are already approved in the American states of California, Nevada and Florida.

Nissan carried out Japan’s first public road test in 2013 and the Swedish city of Gothenburg has given Volvo permission to test 100 driverless cars, although that trial is not scheduled until 2017.

So what do you reckon? Are driverless cars a good idea or are we on the road to ruin? Let us know in the box below.

Statement of intent on driverless vehicles