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http://www.autoexpress.co.uk/97379/ultimate-guide-to-autonomous-driving-pictures#0
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Mr. Nitin Gadkari, the Surface transport and highway minister, recently announced that driverless cars would not be allowed on Indian roads. The minister’s logic is that the driverless technology would take away jobs, therefore, it is not a good idea to have them on Indian roads.
The terminology driverless in itself is wrong. The Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE International) classifies 6 levels, from 0 to 5, of automation in automobiles. On level 0 are automobiles in which machines would issue warnings to the driver. On level 1 the machines and the driver would share the driving job. Assisted parking is an example of level 1 and is available in top end cars. Level 2 is hands off, level 3 is eyes off, level 4 minds off and the level 5 is fully automated or the real driverless level. The ultimate goal in this area is to reach level 5. However, for all practical purposes, the innovators are trying to achieve level 2 and leve3. The talk of levels 4 and 5 are for technology demonstration and publicity purposes alone. For safety reasons, cars having level 4 or 5 will have very limited application in near and medium term future.
Most technological innovations are incremental in nature. Most of the Indian cars are at level 0. It doesn’t make sense to disallow level 5 when we are at the level 0. Disallowing it only means that the government, as of now, is averse to increasing automation in the automobile sector.
We Indians are always averse to automation as we worry that it would take away jobs. In the early eighties, all trade unions mostly supported by left parties went on a general strike to stop the introduction of computing technology in the banking sector. What happened? It delayed but couldn’t stop automation. And, the delay had its own cost. We should remember that no one is born as a driver, a clerk or a teacher. We are all trainable. We can learn to do new jobs. The responsibility of the government is to facilitate that training. It should leave it to the market to sort out whether the technology is good enough to survive or not.
When a new technology comes into being, it creates winners and losers. When we move from level 0 to 2 or 3, some of the drivers may lose their jobs but many would get jobs in the IT industry. Given that India is the market leader in IT services having more than half of the world share, this movement will bring many jobs to the IT sector. I am not saying that the government should not think about drivers who may lose their jobs. Rather than stopping a new technology, the government should focus on training and equipping those drivers so that they earn their livelihood in the changed environment.
We don’t have any autonomous cars in India. However, the regular taxi drivers have already started losing their jobs. The advent of aggregators such as Uber and Ola brought a new category of drivers: part time drivers. Many of them are students or have other jobs. They got into this part time profession because it is economically beneficial. They would change to something else if this market stops rewarding them adequately. Some of the ‘kali-pili’ (black-yellow) taxi drivers have already lost their job but it doesn’t imply that the aggregator should not be allowed to function in the market.
I am not averse to the government playing a role in the market. But, the role has to be either of a regulator or of a facilitator. The government should not try to become a player. Minister Gadkari also promised that the government would come up with an aggregator platform which taxi drivers could use. This doesn’t make any sense to me. Even the government has realized that the public enterprises rarely become good players in the market. That is the reason, our government is trying to get out from many businesses such as air transport and hospitality. On the other side, Mr. Gadkari is talking about entering into another business. The government should act as the referee, as the rule maker, as the regulator rather than aspiring to become a player in the market. A player with a vested interest in the system can never be a good referee.
Even if the minister doesn’t ban this new autonomous technology, given the condition of our roads and traffic, he’ll have his wish come true. This would be really sad for the country. The government should try to facilitate the entry of this autonomous technology as there are economic gains to be made. After all, stopping the introduction of a new technology is not good for the economy.
