Driverless cars

Lord Adonis got himself into hot water recently when he questioned the need for rail freight because it might be replaced by what could be called ‘ wagon trains’ - convoys of lorries running behind each other, quite possibly with only one driver for the whole fleet ( RAIL 841).

As Pip Dunn (late of this parish) highlighted in RAIL 842’s Open Access, this is far more difficult technically than has been assumed, as different lorries have varying acceleration capabilities and it will be difficult to keep them in convoy.

This is all part of a much wider con being perpetrated on the British public. When Chancellor Philip Hammond suggested in the Budget that driverless cars would be in operation on Britain’s roads by 2021, he was being far too optimistic about this technology.

Such predictions have sent waves of panic through the rail industry that driverless cars will take over from public transport. However, in a short book I have just written, Driverless cars: on a road to nowhere, I examine the hype around the concept in some depth and suggest that the whole basis of the concept is flawed. No one wants driverless cars and technically they are a generation or two away, even if they are feasible at all.

Of course, we will have increasing driver aids to make cars safer, but the idea that people will soon be driven to their office in a car which will then be sent off to take the kids (unaccompanied) to school belongs in the same category of fantasy as the individual jetpacks that featured in my Eagle comics 50 years ago.