Zack Goldsmith on driverless cars

We asked Conservative London mayoral candidate Zac Goldsmith if, as mayor, there was anything that he would do to promote driverless cars in London.

He replied, "I have to tell you, I'm a bit worried about driverless cars. I'm sure [younger people] are more excited about them. I worry about them. I'm sure that's where we're going to end up. Driverless trains I think are very good".

We asked Zac why he was worried about the cars. Zac explained that "it requires you to have absolute confidence in the technology, in computers not screwing up.

"And you don't have that [confidence]?", we asked him.

"Well I do but computer error happens. It's a bit like aeroplanes you know. All these horrible things that have happened where the pilot errors, it's always because they've put too much confidence in the computers and I worry about cars malfunctioning and crashing and so on. It's probably unfounded. It probably will happen but I can't pretend I'm not a little bit nervous about them."

Zac is right to be cautious. According to Wikipedia, "On February 14, 2016 a Google self-driving car attempted to avoid sandbags blocking its path. During the maneuver it struck a bus. Google addressed the crash, saying "In this case, we clearly bear some responsibility, because if our car hadn’t moved there wouldn’t have been a collision."Some incomplete video footage of the crash is available." Whilst we believe that Zac is right to be cautious of the current technology available, we are also glad that he keeps an open mind, as he said, the rise of driverless cars "probably will happen" at some time in the near future as the technology gets better.