The battle over Uber and driverless cars is really a debate about the future of humanity | Paul Mason
Uber drivers were right to claim employment rights. But in a world where driverless cars may soon make them redundant, we face long-term dilemmas about the systems we choose
Sometime during the 21st century you will stagger out of a club at 3am and hail a taxi. The vehicle, no longer allowed to loiter in busy areas, will pop out of a stack nearby, find its way to you and honk. You and your drunk companions will stammer out your destinations until they flash up correctly on a screen. And you will glide home, staring enviously at the few people still allowed to drive: emergency service people and maintenance engineers.
What will take you home will not be a car, but rather a system. It might be a passive system, which only orders the traffic and the speeds according to the sum of individual requests, from cars owned by individual people. But it is more likely that it will be an active system – because we, the electorate, will have made it so.
Related: When all cars are driverless, will we need pedestrian crossings?
Source: Guardian Transport
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