Will autonomous cars make roads safer?

I would love to see driverless cars on Indian roads with every car in its own lane, no mindless honking or motorists speaking on their mobiles.

As you know, driverless cars, also known as autonomous cars, are robotic; they can sense their environment and navigate the roads without any human intervention.

But sadly, that’s not going to happen, at least not very soon, as the minister of roads and transport feels that millions of jobs will be lost if he allows such cars into the country.

He would rather continue with the utter chaos on the roads that is surely stressing out millions of motorists and pedestrians every day.

The minister said that maybe some years down the line, India would not be able to ignore the technology, “but as of now... we shouldn’t allow it,” he said. He also said the government is planning a similar app to Uber and Ola, to help people get more jobs.

Meanwhile, huge billboards in Bengaluru scream, ‘Follow Lane Discipline’, which is funny as everyone jostles for space and cars move shoulder-to-shoulder, so to speak, four deep in a three-lane road.

‘Don’t Drink and Drive’ is another hilarious fading sign on the busy roads. Earlier, Karnataka state had made a law that liquor could not be sold in shops within 500 metres of national highways, apparently to cut down the number of accidents as people drive under the influence and go weaving all over the place.

Then I read an amazing newspaper report that the Supreme Court had said that roads within cities can be “denotified”, legalese for “categorised” as national highways, that will help open a window for numerous liquor shops that were set to lose their licences after the blanket ban.

The Supreme Court felt there was nothing wrong in “denotifying” state and district roads that were previously notified as part of national highways.

To make it even more interesting, you can now buy beverages in hypermarkets and pop in a few bottles of your favourite tipple along with your potatoes, onions and garlic paste.

In the state of Bihar up in the north, women took a stand and strong-armed the chief minister, pushing him to ban alcohol throughout the state or face the alternative of them taking matters in their own hands. Seems their husbands were becoming alcoholics and making women do all the work — even that of fetching water from wells — while they lolled around in the fields the whole day and beat their wives at night.

I then saw a shop advertising, ‘We Make dents’. “He must be sending guys to bump as many cars in a day and must be minting money,” I told my wife.

An Uber driver chatted us up on a 45-minute excruciating slow drive through Bengaluru on a Sunday evening, and told us how he missed driving in Dubai. He and a couple of friends had resigned from their jobs in the emirate last year and were all driving for Uber now.

“I was making Rs100,000 (Dh5,730) every month after paying for diesel [yes, many vehicles still run on the pollution-making fossil fuel] and maintenance,” he said. That figure has since dropped because of many more Uber drivers, but he is still making a living driving other people around.

Despite 5,000 new cars being registered every month, nobody drives their own cars.

They keep them parked safe at home while they take Uber or Ola or the ubiquitous auto-rickshaw that can dislocate your spine as it bumps along on the pot-holed streets. There is an excellent Metro system but no one seems to have thought of the need to build parking slots.

“Never hit another car, you will be beaten first and cops called later,” the Uber driver said.

When driverless cars eventually come on the roads, I am sure the robots will revolt.

Mahmood Saberi is a storyteller and blogger based in Bengaluru, India. Twitter: @mahmood_saberi.