India says NO to Self-driving Cars
Latest news from India is that we are to expect no more news on self-driving cars from that part of the world. Automologist MAC who once fre...

“We won’t allow driverless cars in India, I am quite clear on this.” India’s Ministry of Transport has made a stand and announced that there will be NO self-driving or autonomous cars in India, in a move to protect the jobs of perhaps hundreds of thousands of commercial drivers in the country. The Minister of Transport, Nitin Gadkri, said that the Government could not allow technologies that take jobs away. In the announcement, he went further, stating that the country actually needed at least another 22,000 drivers and about another 100 driver training facilities.
The minister, who belongs to the BJP party, did allow the door to be left open a chink though, when he added that in some years to come, it may be impossible to ignore fully autonomous transport systems (aka self-driving cars) and thereafter change his mind. Whilst the ministry is citing the fear of job losses in a country where mass under-employment is rife, this may not of course be the real reason. Having travelled in India, I simply cannot see how the technology that is being developed in leafy Northern California can be adapted to the completely shambolic mess that India calls a road system.
Back in the day when Rajiv Ghandi was trying to introduce computers into India, the BJP tried to stop this on the grounds that it would cause people to lose jobs, so it does sound like the same ol’ same ol’. Guess we can wait and see.