Driverless cars are out of our control

Scepticism about automatic transport is nothing new. Robert Hume looks back at more than a century of misgivings.

Safer than conventional cars — there were 159 fatal collisions on Ireland’s roads last year — self-driving cars stay patient when human drivers get stressed, and can always concentrate. Ever-vigilant cameras and sensors keep them safe.

Well, so we’re told. But a Google self-driving car crashed itself into a bus last Valentine’s Day, as it pulled out at a junction in Silicon Valley, California. Apparently, it made an “incorrect assumption” about where the bus would go. So much for the car’s accident avoidance programme.