Self-driving cars will cost many talented people their jobs
Mike Rutherford thinks the negatives outweigh the positives when it comes to autonomous cars
Car drivers and their passengers waited more than 100 years for a revolution. Then two came along at about the same time.
First, it was the arrival of pure-electric cars. But the talk is now rapidly diverting to the next big, even more revolutionary thing – autonomous vehicles.
I’m comfortable confessing that I instinctively love cars and vans that can be, er, driven. Those that drive themselves I merely, and cautiously, like. Motorised vehicles with four or more wheels and purportedly requiring zero human input at point of use just ain’t appropriate for everyone on every road.
For blind or partially sighted people, folk with other disabilities or the elderly living in the remotest areas, fair enough. Otherwise, it’s a definite no from me.
I have previous with notoriously expensive self-driving cars designed to make the roads safer (possible) and drivers redundant (inevitable). I’ve served a 30-odd-year ‘apprenticeship’ as an autonomous vehicle test passenger who, on one occasion, almost doubled as an involuntary crash test dummy.
On a surreal Sunday morning close to the foot of Mount Fuji in the late eighties, scientist-like boffins introduced me to the displeasure of sitting back and not enjoying the ride from the rear seat of a slow-moving Toyota, whose front pews were hauntingly and needlessly unoccupied. Further autonomous rides in Japan, South Korea, China, Germany and North America gave me more opportunities to not sit back and relax.
More importantly, I feel even more uneasy about the prospects for a massive number of innocent part or full-time drivers. They’ll be cruelly robbed of their jobs, livelihoods, hope and pride when the UK passes legislation allowing cars, vans, taxis and other transport to use public highways and private land, minus their highly trained drivers.
Assisted by financial institutions, safety organisations and other interested parties, the British automotive industry establishment last week talked with greater enthusiasm than ever about such autonomous products landing in a city, town or village near you.
UK trade body the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders calls it Connected and Automated Mobility (CAM) tech, with the claimed “potential” to avert 60,000 serious collisions and save 3,900 lives between now and 2040. Plus there “could” (not “will”) be a positive annual economic impact of between £55-£77 billion, and an “estimated” extra 342,000 jobs – although only 12,250 of those will be in automotive manufacturing.
I asked the SMMT if those extra positions will be outweighed by a far larger number of job losses or redundancies for professional or semi-professional drivers of cars, taxis, vans, HGVs, PSVs and the like?
In response, the society confessed that the “displacement of existing [driver] jobs has not been factored in”.
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