The future of cars

I was reading an article today about elderly people possibly needing to get tested after a certain age in order to be able to stay on the road (as a driver). This all stems from the inevitable fact that eventually our deteriorating health / sight / hearing, etc. prevent us from driving with the same degree of skill as when we were younger. Of course, many readers of the story commented that it's not the elderly that are the biggest problem on the road today. That got me thinking (I'm still young enough to do that..).

There will come a time in the not too distant future when the technology in our vehicles will make it possible to record and store driving data akin to the black box on an aircraft. With the inclusion of GPS systems, our vehicles are pretty much already capable of such a task. The data can easily be analyzed and could be used by law enforcement, insurance and/or licensing bureaus to determine just how good or bad a driver we are based on our exact actions while driving. They will be able to tell if we were speeding, where and for how long. They’ll know every time we performed an unsafe action on the road. Every time we turned without signalling our intentions. None of the bad habits we have become accustomed to doing behind the wheel will be a secret any longer.

Once the insurance industry can prove that their accident and injury payouts (and subsequently our premiums) can drop once the vehicle’s ‘black box’ can prove whether we deserve to be on the road, this will become routine. From that point onward, the data will be used against us any time we are involved in an accident or other road incident. Privacy laws can easily be accommodated by only extracting the data when it is obvious we have done something wrong, like a speed zone infraction caught on radar, or a DUI check stop. So drivers will be playing a game of black box roulette. Nobody will know how bad we are until we are caught committing an infraction. Then the bag will spill out. There will likely be thresholds that must be crossed – we won’t be dinged for every speeding incident, especially if they are short-lived and infrequent. But the person who regularly travels at more than let's say 20km/h over the limit, especially in restricted zones like playgrounds etc., for example, could lose their license. Unlike today, where people who aren’t allowed to drive flaunt the law by sneaking to get behind the wheel anyway (until they are caught), technology will also make it possible to restrict the operation of a vehicle to those carrying a valid (electronic) license.

This is my prediction.