Driverless cars and Smart motorways: solutions or problems?

Some tech is fantastic and ticks all my boxes, such as vaping. As a 20-plus a day smoker for as many years, I quit over a decade ago and invested in an e-cig, and all the appendages that come with it. Granted, there are issues, as it encourages my hedonism as never-ending cigarettes are wont to do, and I can often be found scantily clad at 5am in the bathroom having a quick blast on the chocolate chip cookie flavour (I stopped vaping in bed as my wife believes I sound like an asthmatic Darth Vader).

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There are of course objectors: generally, those in the pockets of tobacco companies who, like black cab drivers with Uber, still refuse to admit the game is up, and that the new kids on the block are giving them a sound beating in the business playground.

But vaping is an exception to the rule I thought, as I had my latest discussion on the merit of Chromebooks with a workmate recently. Heralded as the fresh new thang, maybe due to a masterclass in branding, to me they have taken a bog-standard laptop and stripped it bare before fooling the masses into believing it is a huge new technological development. Given the choice of a device I can use without the internet or one which you can only use with an active connection, it’s obvious where the smart money should be laid, but strangely Chromebooks have flown in the face of such logic.

And now we have driverless cars, although thankfully still in the never-ending R&D stage.

Driverless cars have been the future for a while. Photo: Pixabay

I would estimate there are probably around 10% of road users who must have caught their examiners on a good day in order to elicit the licence and I wouldn’t trust them in sole charge of a kettle, let alone half a tonne of metal braking every five yards as they struggle with any semblance of spatial awareness. Yet, despite that, most drivers manage to get from A to B most days without mishap, and you must wonder why we are hell bent on mechanising even the simplest of pleasures.

It is a basic joy of life, early on a Friday morning when you have had a decent night’s sleep for once on a school night, to put on the shades, wind down the windows and blast out ELO through the sub-woofer, as you enjoy the scenery and count down the hours until the weekend. Why do we then want to have driverless cars?

I fail to understand why you’d trust your life to a robot as you roll through the shires. What if there's an injured bird on the road? Or you see someone in trouble? Or you decide at the last minute to take a detour? If it became reality, no doubt these mechanised monsters will be forced to drive under the speed limit as the infrastructure finally clogs up and we become the seed of an exceptionally large pickle.

However, the one thing that will ensure it never sees mass roll out is that the police and councils would lose income from speed cameras, their cash cow with which to prop up numerous previous financial mismanagements.

A speed camera, which will not make any money if we have driverless cars. Photo: Pixabay

Another ‘advancement’ is Smart motorways. So called as they allow extra signage and variable speed limits to speed up or slow down traffic, as is deemed necessary. Again, the devil is in the detail and despite claiming to improve ‘journey reliability’, whatever that may be, by 22%, the reality is, it’s yet another piece of tech designed to catch out the motorist.

Eventually there will be cameras on every stretch of road and the slightest infraction of the rules will result in ever more severe financial penalties as the Government, having blown the kitty and then some due to Covid, try to claw back some cash, mercilessly, from the golden goose. Eventually the oil revenue will be lost, along with tobacco tax, and further technological advances will be missold as they focus their attention elsewhere in order to fleece us to within an inch of our lives.

No, I’m happy with the way things are: the laptop with a sticky coke-stained keyboard and a diesel car that chugs like Thomas the Tank Engine. To stand still is sometimes to advance as I hug my set-in-my-ways self and thank goodness the future is not here yet.

• Brett Ellis is a teacher