PAAccording to a new report, President Trump really dislikes cars that are able to drive without human interaction.
His latest views on emerging technologies come less than a week after he launched a bizarre attack on aeroplanes following the crash in Ethiopia that killed all 149 passengers and eight crew members.
Now he’s directed his ire towards driverless cars, presumably because older tech is always better and safer than newer.
Airplanes are becoming far too complex to fly. Pilots are no longer needed, but rather computer scientists from MIT. I see it all the time in many products. Always seeking to go one unnecessary step further, when often old and simpler is far better. Split second decisions are….
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 12, 2019
Four sources spoke to Axios about the US President’s open hostility about driverless transport of the future. With American companies like General Motors, Tesla and Waymo leading the way in making the technology a reality, Trump’s comments may come as a surprise.
One of the sources in the report says that Trump acted out scenes with the vehicle veering out of control:
You know when he’s telling a story, and he does the hand motions.
He says, ‘Can you imagine, you’re sitting in the back seat and all of a sudden this car is zig-zagging around the corner and you can’t stop the f—ing thing?’
He told a second source that self-driving cars will never work, coming to the conclusion that the president is ‘definitely an automated car skeptic’.
Another of the sources told Axios that when one member of his Bedminster Golf Club commented on purchasing a new Tesla, Trump said that he’s never trust a car that used a computer to drive him around.
Trump’s opposition towards self-driving vehicles could make the future very difficult for them to be allowed on American roads. There are currently no federal regulations that allow driverless cars, but US Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao is actively promoting the new technology.
PAAccording to Curbed, Chao has set up a new regulatory body for speeding up the use of new transport technologies like self-driving cars and hyperloop tunnels. The new body is being called the Non-Traditional and Emerging Transportation Technology (NETT).
It remains to be seen whether Trump will be doing everything in his power to stop driverless vehicles appearing on American roads. But he’s certainly expected to make the regulatory landscape more hostile.
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Matt Weston is a lover of electric cars, artificial intelligence and space. From Cornwall, he’s a UCLan graduate that still dreams of being a Formula One driver in the very near future. Previously work includes reporting for regional newspapers and freelance video for the International Business Times.