The evolution that the car design has witnessed over the past 100 years has rendered cars safer and has lessened the mental and physical demands on drivers. Innovative devices and platforms included: electric starting; better braking and lighting systems; the introduction of wipers, heaters and demisters; the construction of better roads, and the provision of crumple zones, seat belts and airbags.
Thanks to those innovations, few people died on British roads last year than in 1913, despite an 80-fold influx in traffic volumes. Such fatalities has resulted from human errors rather than mechanical failure, and would be prevented by a combination of improved driver training and additional automation to further simplify, and perhaps ultimately eliminate the driver’s role.
Such inventiveness is likely to achieve more than just introducing more rules and regulations, crucial as they may be.
Rather than hailing its emergence as a revolution, we should embrace driverless technology, which represents a further -perhaps culminating- stage in the long evolution of the car from the primitive horseless carriage to sophisticated, secure personal transport device.