If, like me, you thought that the idea of a car driving itself was some sort of futuristic horror show, I think you need to think again. For the last few days I have been driving a car that literally drives itself. It flies along the motorway at 120 km-h without me steering or using the accelerator or brake. It can overtake safely at speeds up to 200 km-h, but that would be illegal, wouldn't it.
It coasts along suburban roads in automatic mode, brakes when you come to traffic lights. It parks itself. I mean literally parks itself. You can sit in the car and press a button and it squeezes into a tight parking spot or you can stand outside and use your mobile phone to park it. You can even summon it with your phone and it will come out of the parking space and come to you, like some weird electronic dog.
The car I was testing is an expensive Mercedes E class, but we've also tested a modest Ford, which has similar technologies. Ford say they will have a fully automated self driving car by 2021. Isn't that just five years away?
The days of the human sitting behind the wheel, driving the car, may be numbered. Are we ready for this? Is the infrastructure in place to deal with it? What happens when the car is presented with terrible dilemmas?
Want to see a driverless car in action? Watch Richard Downes' report here, from 25 minutes onward.
