Driverless fallout

BESIDES electric cars becoming commonplace perhaps around 2020, much more important is the development of driverless cars.

After initial teething problems driverless cars will be mainstream.

We all put our lives in an airline autopilot system without thinking about it – assuming a manual override when necessary.

With driverless cars the same idea could apply. However, it’s more likely that the car can be a ‘ auto- humanpilot’ preventing you from having an accident.

There would be a massive reduction in road accidents. One may go as far as seeing no need for driving licences. Both these aspects will be a boon to elderly drivers.

And because of this, insurance will be negligible, if not non- existent. This will hugely affect insurance companies whose car insurance business model will disappear.

But it is not just driverless cars that the new technology can apply to. It can similarly be applied to driverless trucks, delivery vans and all motorised transport.

This will have enormous ramifications.

Driverless trucks will be able to pick up, for example, produce and groceries from farms and deliver direct to the door to all people who have ordered such products online. This can be extended to other products.

Whereas in times past the milkman would deliver to the door, now you would get door- to- door delivery of numerous products.

This would then result in the demise of supermarkets ( or at most would become just warehouses) as they would be unnecessary. There is not space here to discuss clothing and allied and other products. Specialty shops can still exist in the supermarket premises.

Alarming consequences might seem to occur. Where one could ring for a taxi which would arrive at your premises to take you to where you want to go, taxi and truck driving jobs will become unnecessary. However, a creative government mind should consider total societal changes with fast technological progress, with different ideas of an economy – and perhaps government!

It is impossible to envisage or describe all consequences of just autonomous transport as there is not enough space in such a brief article. R. L. AGACY,

Gulliver.