India won't allow driverless cars, says transport chief
Self-driving cars are a looming threat to to the human drivers that operate taxis around the world, but in one of the most populated countries, it could take a while before driverless cars start stealing jobs from humans.
On Tuesday, India's transport and highways minister Nitin Gadkari told reporters that the country's government would resist any new technology that threatened to take jobs away from its citizens, namely driverless cars.
“We won’t allow driverless cars in India," he said according to the Hindustan Times. "I am very clear on this. We won’t allow any technology that takes away jobs. In a country where you have unemployment, you can’t have a technology that ends up taking people’s jobs."
According to Gadkari, the country is facing a shortage of roughly 22,000 commercial drivers. The transport minister says he'd like to put citizens in need of work behind the wheel of a car to make up for this shortage or drivers.
Gadkari said he plans to address the growing demand for drivers with 100 new government-sponsored training institutions across the country, which he claimed could lead to 500,000 new commercial drivers over the next five years.
As the government fights to keep autonomous cars off India's busiest street, driverless car development within the country's borders continues. Companies like the Tata Group and Mahindra Group reportedly have their own projects underway on private tracks, where much of the work is focused on simulating the challenging conditions of India's roads.
But self-driving cars appear to be all but a certainty at this point, so the Indian government will eventually be faced with a tough choice: allow safer, more efficient vehicles on its roads at the expense of jobs, or remain tied to an obsolete mode of transportation to give its people a chance to work. While India is one of the few country's that has directly addressed the issue now, it won't be alone in feeling the economic ripple effect caused by automation in the future.
Brett Williams is a Tech Reporter at Mashable. He writes about tech news, trends and other tangentially related topics with a particular interest in wearables and exercise tech. Prior to Mashable, he wrote for Inked Magazine and Thrillist. Brett's work has also appeared on Fusion and AskMen, to name a few. You can follow Brett on Twitter @bdwilliams910.
