TOM UTLEY: Self-driving cars on our roads by 2026 is great news… But why won’t we be allowed to sink a few in the pub before being driven home?

TOM UTLEY: Self-driving cars on our roads by 2026 is great news. . .

But why won’t we be allowed to sink a few in the pub before being driven home? By Tom Utley for the Daily Mail Published: 16:47 EST, 28 December 2023 | Updated: 18:31 EST, 28 December 2023 e-mail 3 View comments You know you’re getting on a bit when you start to regard driving less as a fun activity in its own right, and more as simply a reliable means of getting from A to B, without the exhausting business of walking up hills or hanging around for ages on railway platforms, listening to announcements of delays. That moment has come to me since I turned 70 last month, although it had been creeping up on me for several years before that. True, I still get a buzz from driving along empty, winding country roads, braking into the corners and accelerating out of them.

But I no longer feel anything like the pleasure I experienced behind the wheel in my youth, in the days before speed cameras sprouted around every bend, and the Archbishop of Canterbury could pootle along at 25mph without fear of being fined £300 for breaking a ludicrously low speed limit. In those happy days, the police devoted most of their energies to deterring and catching muggers and burglars, before they decided that persecuting motorists was much less trouble. That was also a time when local councils emptied bins and filled in potholes, before they found it was infinitely more satisfying — and lucrative — to charge car owners for entering Ultra Low Emissions Zones or fine them for cutting through Low Traffic Neighbourhoods .

A self-driving Nissan Leaf car is driven on public roads in Woolwich, south east London Transport Secretary Mark Harper having a ride in a self-driving car being tested by automated driving company Wayve in Westminster If autonomous vehicles are as safe as Mr Harper suggests — safe enough, we’re told, to allow those sitting in the driving seat even to watch TV — then why on earth won’t we be allowed to sink a few pints in the pub before instructing the car to drive us home? (Stock Image) Indeed, driving was one of the greatest pleasures of my life from the age of 12, when my mother taught me how to do it in a field near our home in Berkshire. While my schoolmates dreamed of being engine drivers or fighter pilots, my childhood ambition was always to become a rally driver, in my spare time from practising as a vet. READ MORE: Driverless cars could be on roads in the UK ‘as early as 2026’, Transport Secretary reveals: Mark Harper says self-driving technology will be rolled out ‘gradually’ as he insists crashes are caused by ‘human error’ Advertisement But please don’t think I’m another Mr Toad (poop, poop), or that I’ve ever been anything less than careful on public roads.

While it’s true that I may not always have observed the speed limit to the letter — show me the driver who has never exceeded 70mph, in good visibility on a traffic-free stretch of motorway, and I’ll show you a hen’s tooth — I’ve only once had a speeding ticket. That was in France, where they enforce the rules even more stringently than here at home. Nor have I ever had a crash, on or off the public roads, touch wood, in all the 58 years since I learned to drive.

(I don’t count the two occasions, many years ago — once in London, once in Oxford — when young idiots rammed me from behind while I was stationary in the queue at red traffic lights). Sheer good luck, you may say. Sheer good driving, I reply — though I grant you that the male who admits to being a poor driver is as rare as the female who doesn’t insist that she alone knows the correct way to load a dishwasher.

As I say, however, a lot of the fun has gone out of driving over recent years and not just because of all those speed cameras and the constant risk of being fined. Nor is it chiefly because of the ever-increasing likelihood of getting stuck in a traffic jam or held up at a temporary four-way traffic light, timed to keep us waiting for what seems like a month before it turns green. No, it’s also because I’m very well aware that our reactions slow down as we age.

I don’t feel it yet, but I know that it must be happening to me, because it happens to us all. For all these reasons, I drive more slowly than I used to and I leave more space behind the car in front. No longer do I regard it as an insult to my masculinity if I’m overtaken.

I’ve also learned the truth that it makes very little difference to our time of arrival whether we drive at 80mph or 55mph. This is because there are sure to be roadworks up ahead, bringing the elderly spinster in the ancient Morris Minor once again level with the boy-racer in the Lamborghini, who overtook her 20 minutes earlier. Like so many other drivers of my age, therefore, these days I tend to be cautious, where before we were perhaps merely careful.

Indeed, it is no surprise to me that we elderly, experienced motorists suffer far fewer accidents than the reckless young, fresh from passing their driving tests. Though much of the pleasure has gone, however, I’d be lost without my car. Indeed, one of my greatest fears as I grow older is that, one day, I may have to surrender my driving licence — renewed for just three years, as the law dictates, when I reached my 70th birthday this November.

All’s well now. But what if my eyesight were to begin to fail, dementia sets in or I contract some other medical condition that makes me unfit to drive? If my physical mobility were to suffer, too, it would mean something approaching house arrest, stuck as I am at the top of a long, steep hill in South London, ill-served by public transport and more than 100 miles from our grandchildren in Bristol and Somerset. The quality of my life would plummet, as I became ever more dependent on others (and how much worse, of course, it must be for those who are stranded, carless, in the depths of the countryside with a rural bus service only once a week, if they’re lucky).

For me, as for so many of us, my car and my freedom are indivisible. But now there’s hope for us all. Indeed, I can’t think of any bit of news this year — apart from the birth of another grandchild — that has cheered me up more than this week’s Government announcement that legislation is to be brought forward, permitting driverless cars on some of our roads as early as 2026 .

A Cruise AV, General Motor’s autonomous electric Bolt EV in Detroit I confess that at first I was deeply suspicious of the new technology, finding it extremely unlikely that a computer at the wheel could be anything like as trustworthy as a human driver. To this day, indeed, I’m nervous about using the automatic-parking function in my beloved A-Class Mercedes, which was my gift to myself on my semi-retirement five years ago. Yes, I’ve occasionally used it, but never without keeping a terrified foot hovering over the brake, in case anything should go wrong (which it never has, so far).

It just feels wrong to see the forward and reverse gears engaging themselves and the steering wheel spinning this way and that of its own accord. I like to feel in control and on the whole I prefer to do the parking myself. But if we’re to believe the results of extensive tests on autonomous cars, covering thousands of miles, the technology is already safe — and becoming more so all the time.

As Transport Secretary Mark Harper told Radio 4’s Today programme: ‘This potentially opens up a whole new world for personal freedom, getting to work, having the ability not to have to rely on other people. ‘ Certainly, I want to keep driving myself for as long as I’m able. But if this miracle technology means I’ll never have to give up my car, then I say bring it on.

Just one question. If autonomous vehicles are as safe as Mr Harper suggests — safe enough, we’re told, to allow those sitting in the driving seat even to watch TV — then why on earth won’t we be allowed to sink a few pints in the pub before instructing the car to drive us home? Is it simply because nannying politicians can’t bear the thought of letting anyone else have fun? France Bristol Low Traffic Neighbourhoods Share or comment on this article: TOM UTLEY: Self-driving cars on our roads by 2026 is great news. .

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