You don’t really have to be Elon Musk to figure this out as a possibility, because it’s kind of obvious if you take a step back. The Tesla CEO is suggesting that in the future, it may be made illegal for humans to drive motor vehicles on public roads – you only need to read the tech news sites and know a couple of conspiracy theories to have that idea click.
Think about it: future automotive safety authorities will, at one point, state that it is safer for cars to drive themselves than it would for ol’ Bud or Jane to have a go at it… They’ll make their case sound so compelling, with figures, statistical data and “irrefutable evidence” that it a) may make people buy it right away or b) feel constrained to do so because it’d be deemed as “the right thing.”
The Tesla CEO, who was quoted as saying human drivers are “too dangerous,” adds that autonomous cars will become very common in no time at all. He explains that this is similar to how elevators work and how automatic ones gradually took over from ones that needed an operator – truly an excellent analogy, if we may say so, and one that puts it all into perspective… not!
All of this goes along oh-so well with widely proliferated dystopian views of the future, where the population will be even more strictly controlled, corralled and directed, and where freedom and individuality will be theoretical concepts that will no longer be applicable, and so too will choice.
Elon Musk adds: “we’ll take autonomous cars for granted in a short period of time. It’s going to be the default thing and it’s going to save a lot of lives.” He says it’d take as little as 20 years to swap “the majority” of conventional cars for self-drivers…
This kind-of goes against the sporty-ish image he’s created for the Tesla brand, and he may have noticed immediate negative reactions to his statements.
That’s why he then went on Twitter and said “to be clear, Tesla is strongly in favor of people being allowed to drive their cars and always will be. Hopefully, that is obvious.”
Don’t get me wrong – a safe and perfectly-working autonomous function would be invaluable, but drivers should be given a choice. And instead of assuming that they’ll crash, how about offer better and more realistic driver training that also gets people interested in cars and improve safety too.
Via Road&Track