Will there ever come a day when it is actually illegal to get behind the wheel of a car and drive it yourself?
Tesla founder and possible Terminator Elon Musk says yes, this is a distinct possibility.
Musk made his comments at the Nvidia GPU conference, where he said it’s just too dangerous. “You don’t want a person driving a two-ton death machine,” he said.
Musk’s argument is self-driving cars will eventually be shown to be so much safer than actual, human driving that the public will have no choice but to outlaw the latter.
“[Self-driving cars are] going to become normal,” he said. “It’s like an elevator. We used to have elevator operators, and we developed some simple circuitry … The car is going to be just like that.”
“We’ll take autonomous cars for granted in a short period of time,” he said. “It’s going to be the default thing and it’s going to save a lot of lives.”
Of course, this is something that’s far from certain – and even if it happens it would be years and years from now. In the grand scheme of things, companies like Google and Musk’s Tesla are just beginning to focus on this technology. Google is admittedly far ahead of the curve, and its autonomous vehicles are getting very close to road readiness.
But Musk has said that Tesla will eventually be the leader in self-driving cars.
Likely taking some flak from auto enthusiasts, Musk walked back his comments a bit on Twitter – making it known that a driverless future is not really something he wants to be a part of.
To be clear, Tesla is strongly in favor of people being allowed to drive their cars and always will be. Hopefully, that is obvious.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 17, 2015
However, when self-driving cars become safer than human-driven cars, the public may outlaw the latter. Hopefully not.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 17, 2015
No word on how Musk feels we’ll all get around on his home planet of Mars.
Image via Tesla Motors, Twitter