DRIVERLESS CARS : A NIGHTMARE SCENARIO.

The prospect of 'driverless cars' populating our roads within a few years fills me with foreboding. To me, this is another example of doing something because we can, and for no better or more worthy reason.

What reason is there for having such vehicles on our roads ? While they may have a purpose in highly organised and controlled spaces - airports, theme parks and the like - to let them loose on our largely disorganised and uncontrolled roads seems folly.

People and computers behave differently, people often in intuitive fashion and computers by programming. A driver may often react to a situation before it arises as a result of years of experience added to a bit of anticipation; can a computer driven car ever behave in such a way ? The likelihood  of accidents arising as a direct result of a driverless vehicle behaving in a programmed but wholly unexpected manner, causing surprise and confusion to human drivers, must be substantial. Computers don't break rules, people do; sometimes, breaking the rules may actually avoid problems but a vehicle acting under strict programming would not be able to do this. The only solution to this conundrum would seem to be to make the relevant programming flexible so as to try to mirror human actions, which strikes me as being impossible.

We do have driverless trains and aeroplanes, although neither type of vehicle travels in the heavily congested spaces in which cars do and, almost invariably, they have a human driver available in case of emergencies. Cars are very different. In a driverless world, humans would hand over total control to their vehicles, no longer learning to drive and surrendering themselves to the vagaries of computer performance. From start to finish, their journeys would be outside of their control, unable to circumvent blockages along the way; people would lose all sense of location as location would no longer matter.

Is this what we want ? I, for one, certainly don't. Put the driverless car back in its box and let people  control their own lives, not be controlled by computers.