Guardian columnist Adrian Chiles argues driverless cars answer a question nobody asked and risk deskilling society for novelty’s sake.
He contrasts labour-saving inventions such as dishwashers with technologies that “lobotomise,” tracing a slope from automatics and satnav to fully driverless pods. Chiles celebrates human driving as a shared craft of responsibility and cooperation that usually works, doubts robotaxis will do better, and urges tech talent toward fossil-fuel alternatives and pothole-proof roads instead. The piece responds to the wider robotaxi hype wave rather than a single product launch.