Driverless Cars

AB Editor | 10:22 Wed 27th Feb 2013 | Motoring

56 Answers

This poll is closed.

Google is working on a “driverless car”. Would you ever be comfortable knowing driverless cars were on the road?

No - 191 votes
68%
Yes - 90 votes
32%

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Stats until: 06:49 Sun 22nd Dec 2024 (Refreshed every 5 minutes)

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LazyGun

I would agree with what Ronnie says.

Autonomous cars might present a problem with insurance at the moment, but that problem is not insurmountable.

The potential benefits far outweigh the problems of implementing such systems.

mccfluff

hi lazygun, sorry got distracted, its was a vw passat coupe, couple of years ago and in this country :-)

LazyGun

@McFluff - Ahh, thanks for that )

Nearly bought a VW Passat CC the other day - bought a Merc instead :)

Old_Geezer

Sigh, just tried mine, it crashed out with a blue screen of death. Apparently the update is due soon. Hope it comes with a virus check.

EDDIE51

Aircraft can and do , take off cruise to the destination and land totally automatically. There still have to be 2 human pilots but they are virtually redundant 95% of the time. There are driver-less trains on the DLR ( and many other places) and they are far safer than the trains with drivers. There are advanced studies to replace drivers with computer control on the London Underground, the only reason the drivers still have jobs is union resistance to the 1,000s of redundancies that will result. Ships again are normally on 'auto control' once out of the busiest shipping lanes.
Cambridge has buses that are self guided on the guided bus lanes, it was quite worrying the first time I was on one, the driver just folds his / her arms , sits back and lets the bus steer itself .

Canary42

Can I change my vote - I've just watched Hopkirk's video :-(

ChillDoubt

It's fairly obvious that as mankind progresses and further technical advances are made we will one day see something akin to Minority Report, in relation to cars.

vulcan42

can I ask this? would those who say they would be happy in a driverless car travel in a pilotless plane?

Old_Geezer

Aren't they routinely put on autopilot ?

ChillDoubt

can I ask this? would those who say they would be happy in a driverless car travel in a pilotless plane?
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Moot point IMHO. Driverless cars would in all probability(private vehicles at least) have an override facility, whereby the occupants could take control of their own vehicle, should they feel the need to do so.
Commercial aircraft would in all probability have a pilot overseeing matters, maybe not on the flight deck throughout but certainly at hand, as they pretty much are nowadays anyway as a result of autopilot.
Furthermore, aircraft are subject to far greater extremes than private vehicles and thus would need a certain degree of 'human factor'.
I would guesstimate though that in the next 25 years we'll be well on the way to driverless cars/buses.

Watch Top Gear from 22 minutes onwards:

EDDIE51

As I have already said aircraft now regularly take off fly to the destination and land totally automatically, they even taxi to and from the runway to the parking area automatically . They don't shout about it as it would worry the SLF ( self loading freight , as pilots call passengers)

TWR

Can you remember the Pilot that landed in the Hudson in the USA? does that answer the Question on Pilot less aircraft.

AB Editor

Question Author

"Can you remember the Pilot that landed in the Hudson in the USA? does that answer the Question on Pilot less aircraft."

That's probably the 5% Eddie was talking about...

EDDIE51

TWR in that case there was an emergency they had 100% engine failure so the pilot took control, this will always be the case in emergency but in a normal flight everything is often automatic. It is almost unknown now for a commercial flight to be flown the entire trip by a human pilot. Even if the human does the take off and landing the rest of the trip is normally auto pilot.

TWR

I am aware of that Eddie regards Flights. can you imagine the Motorways on a daily basis? they are bad enough now.