Driverless cars: a safe way to travel?

Ministers want driverless cars on the road by January. But what will the list of do’s and don’ts for those using them look like?

My taste for genre fiction was built on the science fiction magazines of the 1950s, when the futurologists of the time – right-wing libertarian anarchists such as Robert Heinlein, and creative imagists such as Walt Disney – explored autonomous cars (and roads) as the logical outcome of American automation and mass car ownership. They were technically comprehensible then, and in principle feasible: the Paris metro has for years operated a continuous accelerating step-on-and-off...

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