Forums Forums Enthusiast Forums A - Z Autowirral The ethics of the driverless car

Driverless cars are being heralded as the answer to all our motoring problems. But long-term backseat driver Adam Gopnik has a few moral questions to raise.

I do not know how to drive a car.

There - it's out. In Britain, I think this is merely a little unusual. In the US, it is positively shaming. People give you strange looks when you confess this, as though you had confessed to not being able to perform some other, wholly natural function.

Like all people with a guilty secret, I have a perfectly good explanation. I grew up within a couple of blocks of the university where my pedestrian parents both taught, and I eventually went to school there, and then right out of university I went to New York, where no one has a car, and have lived here ever since (plus a few years in Paris, where no one in their right mind would try and drive).

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If the car drives itself, possibly the driver, if inebriated, cannot be done for 'drink driving'.

Drunk and In charge

Sleeping in a car with the keys on the back seat over the limit is enough for a conviction i was told. ?

I think you are right.

I had a friend who went to his car to get his coat out of the back so that he could walk home from the pub. He got done.

He recons that the police had been looking for someone else who hadn't shown up, so they picked on him to justify being there.
That his opinnion.

But, to get on or off a driverless section of road you have to drive on a normal road, so if you were over the limit in the first place then you would be drunk in charge.

I was not being serious of course, just a joke as a talking point.