No electric driver can reach the steering wheel of my classic car
05/24/2014
I recently read an article in a daily newspaper about the legal problems that future cars will produce. Autonomous or assistance system-controlled driving is already within reach and apparently there is now a clear classification of these solutions:
- Level 0: Manual driving
- Level 1: Assisted driving with distance meters, parking aids, lane keeping systems (all of this is already available to buy in the mid-range and even below)
- Stage 2: Partially automated driving, in which the driver no longer has to steer and accelerate/brake themselves in certain situations (such as traffic jams)
- Level 3: Highly automated driving. The vehicle finds its own way, but the driver is still behind the wheel with a duty of control
- Level 4: Fully automated driving, where a driver is no longer required for certain applications, e.g. parking
- Level 5: Driverless driving, e.g. in the form of a robot cab (we know this from science fiction films such as "Minority Report")
But who is to blame if an accident happens and no human was driving? Of course, the manufacturers don't want to take on all the responsibility and so the idea of an "e-driver" was born. In addition to the human driver, an electronic driver could then also be insured as the driver of the vehicle and in the event of an accident, this part of the insurance cover would probably come into play. It is even conceivable that e-driving could become cheaper in terms of insurance if significantly fewer accidents happen this way, while human drivers would pay increasingly higher insurance premiums.
For our classic and vintage cars, of course, only level 0 is an option and an electric driver has no business at all behind the wheel of our beloved classics.
That's a good thing. Even though driverless cars seemed feasible many decades ago and these ideas have already become classic cars themselves, as the picture of the electric Ford Mustang above shows. In general, futurologists were already further ahead in their ideas 50 years ago than we have managed to achieve today ....
