How Driverless Cars Will Change The Law And Our Lives

Can you imagine sitting in the passenger seat of your vehicle, staring across at the driver seat as your car heads on down the motorway and seeing an empty space?

Can you imagine jumping in your car, entering a destination into the onboard navigation, putting your feet up and reading the morning newspaper as your vehicle drives you to work?

Driverless cars are often considered to be a far-off technology that people believe will never reach realisation – that is not strictly true! We may be closer to this leap in vehicular automation than you think. 

And with yesterday’s announcement that all new petrol and diesel cars are to be banned in the UK from 2040 – it appears the hierarchy are already preparing for big changes in the automotive industry.

How Soon For The Realisation of Driverless Technology?

Many mainstream car manufacturers are already developing concept cars featuring driverless technology and even full automation. Toyota, for example, gave us a preview of the concept-I vehicle in January that looked ultra-modern and featured a complete automatic driving system. 

Other companies such as Tesla and Volvo have already rolled out partially automatic driving systems in such vehicles as the Model S and Passat. Whilst these vehicles may not be truly driverless, they do contain some amazing automatic controls that make motorway driving and parking infinitely easier. As manufacturers continue to refine and develop this type of technology, we should only see an increase in its availability and complexity.

How Driverless Cars Will Change Our Roads And Lives?

Driverless cars would take away much of the stress and strain associated with driving (well that’s the idea anyway). You would not have to worry about changing gears, indicating or even steering! In essence, the ultimate goal is for the vehicle owner to simply get in their car, input a destination in the sat-nav and let the AI (artificial intelligence) of the vehicle do the driving. This could change the way that driving tests are taken, that licences are distributed or even how laws and regulations are administered. The ramifications of driverless cars are much greater than simply making long journeys less stressful and physically draining.

Driverless Cars And Law

As mentioned, driverless cars could dramatically change the legalities involved in motoring. For example, if a driverless car has an accident, who is to blame? Is the owner of the car liable? If the accident resulted in a death, who would receive prosecution? This type of technology could completely alter vehicular legislation and also raise new issues regarding insurance – how do you insure a car that has no driver? How do you make a claim or counterclaim against a driverless car?

Writer’s Bio: Lewis Murawski is the Marketing Director at Kahootz Media. He has been ranking websites on the first page of Google for more than 10 years. Connect with Lewis on LinkedIn.