Marco Longhi
Main Page: Marco Longhi (Conservative - Dudley North)Department Debates - View all Marco Longhi's debates with the Department for Transport
Driverless Cars
Marco Longhi Excerpts(2 years, 11 months ago)
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Marco Longhi (Dudley North) (Con)
It is a great pleasure to contribute to the debate under your chairmanship, Dr Huq. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes North (Ben Everitt) for introducing the debate, as I am a keen proponent of advancing new technologies where they are available to us.
We live in an age where there appears to be no bounds to the possibilities offered by technology to virtually every aspect of our lives. That is certainly true of transportation. The ability to take off, fly and land aircraft with several hundred passengers aboard is one example that has been available to us for decades. For that reason, it is at least to some extent surprising that we are only now starting to make meaningful advances in the technology around driverless cars. That probably has something to do with manufacturers understanding their markets better than most and realising that public perception is a significant obstacle to overcome, so the question for me becomes more one of how we address the gap in public acceptance rather than whether there are technological solutions.
Identifying the issues —I was going to say the drivers—behind that gap is key, and understanding how we can bring certainty to ameliorate the fears arising from them is even more important. The UK often leads the way in innovation, but can often fall at the implementation phase, leaving the door open for other countries to, effectively, copy and implement. We have seen that happen many times over the past century. Let us hope that this is not one such case and that we can actually benefit from the technologies that we have in our hands and that we are developing in our country.