IF

the NRMA thought they were making an April Fools day joke yesterday it certainly backfired on them, and if they were serious about banning petrol and diesel cars by 2025, they should consider the following.

Just like the recent Boeing 737 MAX crashes and the continuing Takata airbag deaths, despite extensive testing we don’t know the short and long-term implications of new technology until when problems actually begin to happen in increasing frequency.

Apart from the massive expense to those on lower incomes, it would be foolhardy for governments to ban petrol and diesel cars while the long-term (at least 15 years) safety issues of electric and other alternative vehicles have not been identified and rectified.

I certainly would not want to be

hurtling along a road in a car that can override my manual control and has the potential to either cause massive harm to others or turn into a fire bomb on impact with a stationary object, under manual or automatic control!

Even proposals to immediately discharge the batteries when airbags are triggered, to prevent people from being burnt to death by the batteries exploding/discharging (this is happening now), is not remotely feasible for the batteries in use today with our current technological knowledge.

If we don’t have a death penalty, as one innocent death is one innocent death too many, why change that and make Russian roulette mandatory! LAURIE KENNEDY, BIGGERA WATERS