I was interested today to know what your feelings might be to be taken on a trip in a driverless car.
I ask this because believe it or not but driverless taxis are actually being operated by a company called WAYMO in some cities in the USA.
In some places you can even order a takeaway which will be delivered in a car without a driver.
Quite how you would pay and what would happen if the order delivered to you was wrong in some way order is unclear.
Nevertheless people living in places like Phoenix, Los Angeles and San Francisco can already book a “so-called” no person pick up and that service will soon be extended to Austin in Texas.
And TESLA owner Elon Musk is also set to get in on the act.
But to go back to my earlier question, how would you feel about travelling in such a vehicle?
Well personally after learning about the experience that a Mr Mike Johns had, after he’d hired a Waymo cab to take him to an airport in Arizona, I’d be more than a little wary.
It seems that the vehicle lost its way from the word go, going completely loopy by hurtling round the car park where he’d boarded the cab, no less than 8 times.
Probably pretty dizzy from his unscheduled merry-go-round tour of the car park, Mr Johns phoned the company’s customer service department, who somewhat unhelpfully revealed that they had no way of controlling the car remotely.
Now I don’t know about you but I’m already underwhelmed with how things are going!
Their only suggestion was that he should try to stop the car by using the Waymo app on his phone.
Perhaps that solution worked as Incredibly, Mr Johns did make it to the airport in time to catch his flight.
Oh and by the way he wasn’t charged for his outing!
It has since been disclosed that the issue causing the taxi to drive in continuous loops was subsequently resolved following a regularly scheduled software update.
Likewise back in August a software update was required after all the vehicles parked up for the night started blasting their horns at full volume every morning at 4am.
Anyway coming back down to earth, I was joined once more in the second hour of today’s programme by local historian, Margaret Mills who’s chosen subject today was Latton Priory near Harlow, where a number of surveys took place to try and find out more of the history of the Priory and what had occupied the land where the priory once stood.
Listen again here to what Margaret told me today: –
I very much hope to see you again next week,
Scott