Are we on the way to "black box" driving?

[RayPike]

Just thinking - with the increase of electric vehicles over the next 10 years and the increase of in-car tech and "driverless cars" there will come a point in the not too distant future where the revenue the government gets from fuel will significantly decline. They can't just whack on a load of tax to electricity as that also impacts granny no-car and that won't do. They can't just whack up all vehicle tax so it seems likely the only way forward will be a sort of "pay for the miles you drive" tax and the only way that can be reliably policed is by black boxes in every car, which also brings the implication that your speed record will be completely available to "those that have access" therefore any incident of speeding no matter when or where it happens will be recorded.

The end of driving as we know it?

[RayPike]

Having computers control everything will certainly be safer than the knuckle-dragging half-awake morons (mainly in BMWs) I seem to have driving half in my boot most mornings as I have the temerity to only be doing about 62mph on a NSL B road!

The change in driver habits (and maybe cars) will have to be enormous - if you WILL be caught for speeding (or cars know the limits and will not speed) then it may remove a lot of stress as you simply cannot go any faster anyway, so journey times will be more accurate (if slower). I suppose to start off with it may just be (max) vehicle speed that is controlled by computer and the drivers still steer?

Maybe they'll add collision avoidance systems to stop vehicles pulling out in front of others?

I can see issues in the "change over" period though where there is a mixture of old non-computer cars and new "smart" cars. There will have to be a fairly rapid phasing out of "dumb cars" I'd have thought as otherwise there would be chaos with driver-controlled cars bullying the computer-controlled ones!

I feel a feature film script coming on ;-)

[RayPike]

So if we end up with homogenised cars with black box controlled speed limits, will there still be a market for supercars? Private track days aren't really going to create enough demand.

[RayPike]

The only fair way would be a usage based system but that's a very good point ^^^ about congested areas attracting a premium. Driving 10 miles along a country lane in Wales shouldn't be the same cost as 10 miles in Greater London. Quite how the categorisation would get done is beyond me!