This newspaper article 'excites' me as technology-related stories rarely do. A senior executive at Google claims that driverless electric cars will develop so rapidly that his 11-year old son will never need to get a driver's licence. That means ten years from now. Allowing for hyperbole, it might be the dominant reality in the US within twenty years, and in India within maybe thirty.
Given that the oil-powered human-driven automobile is one of the worst polluters, space-guzzlers and killers in the world, I cannot but laud this development. (I have been a victim myself, remember, and I got off lightly. I wonder whether they will come up with driverless motorbikes too?) It will certainly bring about far wider and deeper changes in society than the mobile phone has done, that's for sure. Some driving lovers like me will be sad over the passage of a long era. But I have been lucky, I have almost had my fill, and these days I find the roads too crowded and dangerous on average for driving to be much of a pleasure any more. And anyway, by the time driverless cars become the norm, according to the above projections, I shall be past eighty, so I would like to be driven around anyway.
Provided those 'brainy' cars are safe and reliable. Those who are literature-wise challenged, look up Isaac Asimov's chilling short story 'Sally' (you will find it here), or the movie called 'Christine' based on a story by Stephen King.
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