India’s transport minister vows to ban self-driving cars to save jobs

Companies in the United States, Germany, Japan, and other countries are racing to develop self-driving cars. But India’s top transportation regulator says that those cars won’t be welcome on Indian streets any time soon.

“We won’t allow driverless cars in India,” said Nitin Gadkari, India’s minister for Road Transport, Highways, and Shipping, according to the Hindustan Times. “I am very clear on this. We won’t allow any technology that takes away jobs.”

In recent years, new technology has mostly created jobs for drivers. In India, the leading ride-sharing services, Ola and Uber, completed 500 million rides in 2016, creating work for Indian drivers. But Uber’s ultimate goal is to introduce fully self-driving cars that will make these driving jobs obsolete.

Gadkari is taking a very different approach from politicians in the United States, where both the Obama and Trump administrations have been keen to promote the development of self-driving vehicles. “We are bullish on automated vehicles,” said Obama Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx last year. His successor, Elaine Chao, has also signaled support for self-driving technology, while also expressing concerns about safety risks and potential job losses.

One important difference, of course, is that several of the leading companies working on self-driving cars—including Google, Tesla, General Motors, Ford, and Uber—are based in the United States, giving American officials a natural incentive to promote the technology and help American companies beat overseas rivals to market.

Self-driving technology is still a few years away from mainstream commercial use, so Gadkari’s comments won’t have any immediate effect. And it’s not clear if other policymakers share Gadkari’s view. The Hindustan Times notes that one proposal pending in the Indian legislature would allow testing of self-driving technology.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/07/ind...