India Will Never Get Driverless Cars As Long As He's Transport Minister, Confirms Nitin Gadkari

As most of the developed nations across the globe actively pursue autonomous technology for driverless vehicles, the question is raised to the Indian authorities time and again. Clearing all doubts in these regards once and for all, Union Minister Nitin Gadkari confirmed that he will not allow driverless cars in India.

"Many times I am asked what about a driverless car? Then I say till the time I am the transport minister, you forget that. I will not allow a driverless car to come to India," stated Gadkari.

Gadkari¡¯s firm stance comes despite a noted lack of drivers in the country. As per a PTI report, India struggles with a shortage of up to 22 lakh drivers. Autonomous technology equipped in cars to make them driverless aims to solve this issue alongside that of a lack of safety on the roads due to human errors.

Nitin Gadkari (Representative Image: BCCL)

Instead of using the technology, Gadkari looks at the vacant driver positions as an employment opportunity for the Indian drivers. The denial for bringing the technology to the country is not the first time that the minister has been vocal about it. A similar statement was made by the minister back in March, disregarding any prospect of bringing the technology to India. ¡°We have decided not to allow driverless cars in India. I am sorry," Gadkari had said at the time.

A misguided approach?

If we look at the autonomous technology currently being put to use across the international markets, even the highest levels of autonomy (presently at level-4) require a driver behind the wheel as of now. So essentially, appointing some levels of it can be treated as a driver assist mechanism rather than an alternate for a human driver altogether.

In addition, such technologies have already been proved to decrease the chances of a road accident, thus increasing safety on the roads. That, in fact, was the whole purpose of developing the technology in the first place.

An autonomous car in action. (Representative Image: Reuters)

In addition to the autonomous technology, Gadkari also mentioned India¡¯s upcoming vehicle scrappage policy, meant to discard decade-old vehicles in the country. He stated how the policy will be helping propel India towards its 5-trillion economy dream by providing a viable source of raw materials for the production of new vehicles and hence reducing the country¡¯s dependency on imports for the same.