Driverless cars might sound great but would YOU trust one on the school run?
IMAGINE a future when you can ditch the school run and bung your kids into a driverless car while you put your feet up.
Apparently, that day isn’t too far off.
It might sound amazing — but I’m terrified.
Ministers want to allow cars, coaches and lorries with self-driving features to be sold in Britain within months and used on motorways from 2025.
We would be following Germany, China and American states including Texas, Florida and California who already allow self-driving vehicles.
Transport Secretary Grant Shapps raves about them, saying they will make our roads safer by reducing the dangers of driver error in road collisions.
Read more on driverless cars
And the Department for Transport says the self-driving industry could be worth £42billion for the economy.
But I’m not the only one with concerns. New research shows that more than half of us are uncomfortable with the thought of using these cars or even sharing a road with them.
I get nervous on a plane when I am not in control and although I hate driving, I imagine I’d feel the same roaming the roads in one of these cars.
As wonderful as artificial intelligence — AI — technology could be, can it really predict the behaviour of other road users or pedestrians at the side of the road?
Most read in The Sun
Can the sensors really cope with our freezing cold weather in the winter? And although the initial plan is for them to be used on motorways, one day, I’m sure, the plan will be for them to race around our winding, narrow, medieval roads.
Experts claim during trials here — in Croydon, Oxford and on the M40 — that there haven’t been “any accidents”.
But no computer system can offer total protection from crashes. And when they go wrong, they can go very wrong. Even though there are only a few of these cars around, there have still been plenty of accidents.
There was a fatal Tesla incident in Florida when the AI apparently mistook a lorry for the sky, a crash with a San Francisco motorcyclist and an Uber self-driving car that struck and killed a pedestrian in Arizona.
There is already a campaign running in California to ban Tesla’s full self-driving software from American roads. Adverts there play regularly on TV warning of the perils of AI cars.
There are scores of cash-hungry “self-driving car accident lawyers” too who are advertising their services and salivating at the thought of these motors becoming top dogs on their roads.
Surely this is an advance warning for us.
Our roads are a battle ground already. One expert described the Government as being “bullish” in bringing these cars out next year. They have already had a fail with smart motorways and have had to pause their roll-out amid concerns by safety campaigners and MPs following a series of horrific accidents.
There is craziness on all of our roads, not just motorways.
FEWER WORKERS
Around 430 pedestrians are killed on British roads every year.
There were 1,280 collisions involving e-scooters last year.
Bikes are causing such chaos that there are calls for them to have speed limits. Cyclist fatalities on British roads rose by 40 per cent in 2020, with 16,294 injured in reported road accidents, including 4,356 who were killed or seriously injured. Many go unreported.
We don’t need more chaos.
On the plus side, these vehicles of the future come with the promise of 38,000 new jobs.
But when all these cars, buses and lorries start driving themselves, the old jobs will pay the price.
There will be no white van man, no taxi or lorry drivers. Their managers and support staff will be unemployed too.
There will be fewer car salesmen and garage workers because the plan is for private cars to die a death and instead we will just press a button on an app for a driverless car to zoom to our homes.
It could be catastrophic.
Generally we Brits aren’t keen on change, and new technology can seem frightening at first.
Maybe if they are not rushed out and are rolled out when it is 1,000 per cent safe to do so, I am sure we will eventually embrace them and wonder how we ever lived without driverless cars.
But I am pretty sure my three-year-old will be doing his A-levels before I am booking a driverless car for the school run.
BRAVE LINDA’S VANITY IS A LESSON TO US
SHE was always my favourite supermodel.
But Linda Evangelista, who once said she wouldn’t get out of bed for less than $10,000, now says her face is “permanently deformed” and “brutally disfigured” after a fat-reduction treatment last September called CoolSculpting.
You would think a supermodel would never really think she needs fat freezing, but Linda bravely admits: “I’m a little vain. And it backfired.”
Talking to British Vogue this month she says she feels insecure. She posed for them wearing a scarf around her neck in every single picture, and admitted: “That’s not my jaw and neck in real life.”
She tearfully added: “If I had known side effects may include losing your livelihood and you’ll end up so depressed that you hate yourself . . . I would not have taken that risk.”
I have had the same CoolSculpting treatment. It cost a fortune and hurt like hell but my chubby belly became toned abs within weeks and I thought it was magical. I even went for a second round.
I realise I was lucky. I don’t plan to try it again because Linda’s words are a terrifying lesson to us – to appreciate what we have in life.
PARTY LEADER
BOTH Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin and Boris Johnson clearly have a love for politics and partying.
A leaked video of her dancing wildly with friends at a house party has caused controversy.
Stuffy political opponents, with nothing better to snipe about, have said Sanna shouldn’t be able to let her hair down and that she acted in an unprofessional manner. How ridiculous.
But there is also a suggestion that one of the people in the footage shouts out a euphemism for cocaine.
The PM reacted, saying: “I have not used drugs myself, or anything other than alcohol. I’ve danced, sung and partied and done perfectly legal things.”
Let’s hope she is telling the truth or she will be Finn-ished.
HOW to be a man of the people?
Tell the world you love nothing more than a trip to McDonald’s with the kids?
Rishi Sunak attempted that this week and it backfired on him in spectacular fashion.
The former Chancellor told This Morning that when he goes with his daughters they have the “wrap with the hash brown and everything in it”. They stopped selling that more than two years ago. Rumbled!
Bet the Sunaks really tuck into sourdough and crushed avocado.
MORE than 200 pubs have closed this year.
One of them is my local, The Heaton, near Manchester, which shut this week. The landlady was close to tears as she told her staff.
It was always packed out for Sunday dinner and its beer garden was heaving on a summer’s day. But it still couldn’t make the figures work.
The problem for a lot of pubs is pricing. While supermarkets can sell food and alcohol without tax, pubs can’t.
During a time of forced penny-pinching, it is obvious that boozing at home is much cheaper.
Without punters, pubs can’t survive. Landlords need support and should have tax equality with supermarkets or soon they will all be gone and nipping out for a pint will be a thing of the past.
TATTOO MUCH
OH dear. I have visions of tattoo parlours in Newcastle being booked out for weeks.
The Sun this week revealed Newcastle footie fan Kevin Taylor had his favourite Toon stars etched on his body.
Brazilian midfielder Joelinton was one of them.
He was so flattered when he found out, that he invited superfan Kevin to his house and gave him a signed shirt.
I am now doing my best to make sure The Geordie doesn’t hear about it or I will have a boyfriend covered in Alan Shearer tattoos.
And poor Alan will be expected to invite him round for tea too.
COMEDIAN Matt Forde has a point.
He took to Twitter after a baby “derailed” and disrupted his one-man show at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe by crying.
He said the parents should have done the decent thing and left when it started crying.
I agree. There is nothing funny about a screaming baby spoiling the show for everyone.
DISCUSSING her upcoming wedding, Gemma Collins says she will marry fiancé Rami Hawash in a winter wedding at Claridge’s because she isn’t “prepared to sweat in that dress and make-up”.
The GC, yet again, talks perfect sense.
I DON’T get the hype about TV’s Marriage (or Sean Bean being a sex god, to be honest).
People are raving about it as it shows what marriage is really like.
I wanted to love it because Nicola Walker, above with Sean, is a great actress.
Read More on The Sun
But it has zero plot . . . it just plods.
I don’t need explosive twists to be entertained, but if I wanted to see a couple mundanely filling a dishwasher, I’d go into my own kitchen.