The government is going to permit driverless cars on the roads at some point this year. Ever since the gruesome twosome of Ernest Marples and Richard Beeching set our transport network in the wrong direction, the operating assumption has been that the internal combustion engine is, so to speak, in the driver's seat. Pedestrians and cyclists conduct miserable territorial disputes on the pavements ; a bus service worth using is fast becoming a matter of history outside London ; woe betide anyone if they wish to undertake 'complex' rail journeys, or wish to travel at a reasonable cost. There is ample evidence that cars, in the wrong hands, are killing machines ; and that a significant proportion of drivers lose all grip of common sense when they are behind the wheel.
The advocates of driverless cars take this irresponsibility for granted, and assume that the way to overcome it is to take the power of decision away from the driver altogether. However, this rationale is flawed on two counts. First, no technological system will always work perfectly. Second, this system will be connected to the Internet, and is therefore vulnearble to being hacked. The fact remains that the motor vehicle is an inherently anarchistic and perilous mode of transport. As with the proponents of electric cars, who like to suppose that this will make the motor vehicle much more environmentally friendly, they wish to maintain the central role of the motor vehicle in transport policy, when it is far from clear that it is in society's interest that it should be so.
Like the government's ill-considered abandonment of the hard shoulder on some motorways, and its prioritisation of road construction projects, this policy assumes that the whims and convenience of drivera are paramount, even when they are anti-social to a pathological degree.