With the prospect of driverless cars motoring around London, the future seems closer than ever. The private taxi firm Addison Lee has signed a deal with tech pioneers Oxbotica to get driverless cars on the roads by 2021. Preparations have started already, with Oxbotica mapping out more than 250,000 miles of public roads around London.
Addison Lee insist that even though the cars will be driverless, their drivers will still be employed? But to what extent? What would their actual jobs be? Or will they be getting paid to do nothing?
There’s more at risk than drivers’ jobs. This is also is a big safety risk for the whole of London, since driverless cars have not been tested on this scale before. It all seems a bit quick! 2021 is only three years away: how is this enough time to get the cars made and thoroughly test the driverless system, to make sure it is road safe?
Back in March, one of Uber’s self driving taxis killed a woman in the USA. How do we know the Addison Lee vehicles will be different?
Perhaps they should trial the self driving taxis in a city with less traffic, to lessen the chances of collision. I think for now we should focus on improving the transport system we have, rather than going for gimmicks that could end in catastrophe.
