LETTER TO SPECTATOR:
I suspect Toby Young's prediction ("Driverless cars will make your life worse", 22 October) will be viewed in future with the same amusement as we now view Tom Watson's in 1943: "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers".
Toby says "Driverless cars will be slower, more expensive and socially divisive". Really? On the basis of a couple of his dubious speculations about "algorithms"?
Meantime, my daughters in Australia have sold their cars because they find it easier, faster and cheaper (yes, faster and cheaper) to use Uber.
Probably In their lifetime, and certainly in that of their children, we shall have fleets of autonomous vehicles in our cities, faster, cheaper and cleaner than any human-based ones we have now.
Toby's call to "nip this technology in the bud" has about as much chance of happening as Dr Lardner's in 1830, when he called for the abandonment of fast railways because passengers would be asphyxiated.
Peter F.
***
I suspect Toby Young's prediction ("Driverless cars will make your life worse", 22 October) will be viewed in future with the same amusement as we now view Tom Watson's in 1943: "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers".
Toby says "Driverless cars will be slower, more expensive and socially divisive". Really? On the basis of a couple of his dubious speculations about "algorithms"?
Meantime, my daughters in Australia have sold their cars because they find it easier, faster and cheaper (yes, faster and cheaper) to use Uber.
Probably In their lifetime, and certainly in that of their children, we shall have fleets of autonomous vehicles in our cities, faster, cheaper and cleaner than any human-based ones we have now.
Toby's call to "nip this technology in the bud" has about as much chance of happening as Dr Lardner's in 1830, when he called for the abandonment of fast railways because passengers would be asphyxiated.
Peter F.
***
