A lorryload of trouble faces future drivers

THERE are times when you glance at the calendar and think: with luck I won’t be around by the time that arrives. Driving a long distance on a motorway is already traumatic enough with tens of thousands of thundering juggernauts occupying not one but all three lanes.

Their favourite sport seems to be squatting side by side in perfect formation, mile after mile, as one seeks to overtake another with a speed advantage of a quarter of a mile per hour. But a fresh delight is in the offing: no-driver lorries.

There is talk of trucks with software that will steer them from start-point to destination, at legal speed but with an empty cab.

Another idea is that a driver sits up there as ever but exists only to steer the monster. All power settings are automatic. The danger, it seems, is that this chore will be so boring the little dears will nod off.

Yet a further hazard is that their tiny brains will deduce that they can save fuel and money by forming nose-to-tail columns to take advantage of their mutual slipstreams. Sounds good until the poor car driver, seeking to join the motorway from a slip-road, is confronted by an unbroken column of wagons 30 miles long.

At which point no doubt some teenage hacker will invade their database and divert them to Fishguard which will intrigue the citizens of that fine Welsh port. By then, with God’s good grace, I shall be in sole command of a mobility scooter trundling down to the Jolly Cricketers at lunchtime. Always assuming the lorries get there with the necessary supplies in time.