Following an open letter, an interview in newspaper De Morgen and an opinion piece in Knack, More Lion's Pieter Morlion was interviewed by Hajo Beeckman and Pieterjan Huyghebaert on how self-driving cars could shape our future. During a nice conversation in Kaffie is Kaffie in Gentbrugge, Pieter explained that we might want to look at it exactly the opposite way: we can shape our future by using the self-driving car as an instrument. Instead of focusing on technical features or liability issues, we should use the self-driving car to reduce the negative side-effects of automobiles and exploit possible benefits of the new technology.
A serious solution to consider, is giving the self-driving car a different legal status. This could empower governments to use self-driving cars as a tool to overcome current large-scale problems as inefficient land-use, traffic jams, bad air quality and the high societal costs of personal transport. Special regulations for self-driving cars could allow us to free up space in our cities by not allowing automated vehicles to park in the street (they can drive somewhere else themselves), not allow self-driving cars with combustion engines or get a better grip on costs, taxation and traffic information. Comments are closed.
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