Driverless cars described as ‘game-changer’ for safety, despite MPs’ concerns
Driverless cars have been described as a “game-changer”, despite MPs expressing concerns on safety and the potential weaponisation of autonomous vehicles.
Transport Secretary Mark Harper told the Commons that the Automated Vehicles Bill is part of the Government’s plans to make the UK “the natural home for the self-driving vehicle industry”...
Labour MP Clive Efford (Eltham) urged the Transport Secretary to ensure that the makers of self-driving car technology cannot cover “their own backs” if accidents happen.
Mr Efford said: “We have also just experienced the Horizon scandal where the manufacturers themselves had access to the technology. What security have drivers got that we won’t have the designers of this software that will be governing these cars actually covering their own backs?”
I'm not sure what Mr Efford means here. Perhaps he is worried that driverless cars could blame the other driverless car in the event of an accident. Maybe other driverless cars would turn up and say they saw the accident and it was definitely the fault of the blue driverless car, not the red one and the blue one was going 0.3mph too fast anyway.
More bureaucracy seems to be the preferred answer.
8 comments:
From the same sort of people who brought you motorways with no hard shoulders?
With the phasing out of petrol and diesel, insufficient infrastructure for electric, and the cars costing a fortune, I think carless drivers will be a bigger electoral issue than driverless cars.
They could join up all the driverless cars, put them on rails, and call them trains!
The Docklands Light Railway in London has been doing that for years!
dearieme - probably the same people escaping to another role before the deaths become too big a scandal.
Sam - I think it's a plan to tackle obesity. To be affordable, electric cars will have to be so tiny that only people weighing 10 stone or less will be able to climb inside one.
Scrobs - the trouble is, HS2 tells us the government can't manage modern technology such as railway lines.
Dearieme has a great point. Smart motorways were supposed to employ smart technology to detect breakdowns, but for what ever reason, didn't work. The difficulties involved in the much more complex driverless technology may be overwhealming.
"to make the UK “the natural home for the self-driving vehicle industry”
I ssume they're all electric then? The UK is not the natural home for petrol or diesel cars
“Perhaps he is worried that driverless cars could blame the other driverless car in the event of an accident.”
There’s a sort of insane incompetence gripping the west.
Tammly - from what I've seen, driverless cars could work on motorways at least, but trust could be an issue.
Bucko - that's what I read into it, driverless means electric and all that this implies.
James - and gripping it very firmly in an unfortunate place.
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