driverless cars: to drive or not drive
is this the future?
There's been a lot of speculation recently about autonomous cars and if they can actually work or not. The real question is not if they work, but do we actually want or need them? The nation's leading car buying service Webuyanycar have done research using its customer database into how the public are reacting to the idea of autonomous cars. After their thorough survey, these are the results:
- 85% of car enthusiasts saying they enjoy the involvement of driving the car themselves and haven't warmed to the idea of the car doing all the work for them. The thought of a emotionless, self-driving car which we have limited control over doesn't interest the petrolhead community unsurprisingly.
- 45% of British drivers might be persuaded after thorough research and development has deemed them safe and younger drivers who are more likely to adopt the idea early on. The train of thought is that autonomous cars will heavily reduce congestion meaning shorter journey times due to automatic traffic flows and will almost completely kill off road rage.
London being the capital city has a serious problem with congestion. 25% of Londoners have already said that they would give up manual cars and swap over to driverless suggesting that large cities are more open to the idea rather than less populated areas.
Richard Evans, Head of Technical Services at Webuyanycar.com, said: "Autonomous vehicles are an exciting development within technology and motoring. Perhaps due to the ambiguity around how the final models will look and work, public opinion is uncertain. More knowledge of how the vehicles will be rolled out, their cost, and how owners can sell them on when it's time to trade up will help the general public make a conclusion. We're hearing that driverless cars are set to be the next piece of tech to change the world, but ultimately it's motorists who will make that decision and at present it seems that opinion is divided across the country."
What's your thought on this? Please comment below, we'd like to hear your opinion.
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Comments (6)
Perfect for getting me home from the pub, I'm all for it.
As someone who loves driving, and hates being a passenger in any road vehicle, self-driving cars are not for me.
The ideea of autonomous cars is nice for the daily traffic jams. However, I like to drive when going outside the city and I don't want anyone to take that away from me. So, these autonomous cars should have a button which turns everything off and you can control the car manually like you would any other car. That's what I think they should do.
I like to drive, I really do. But the 1.5 hour one way commute to work every day and back... I'd love to sit back and take a nap! Or do some reading. Play a game. Scroll facebook. Practise guitar. Anything is better than never ending day in day out traffic jams, And then actually enjoy driving myself in evenings or weekends!
I'd need to experience it once first before I could judge it (self-driving.) I definitely enjoy driving now. I put 850 miles on my Fiat 500 this weekend primarily for fun.