The Effect of Driverless Cars in India

Humans have developed technology to make things easier, not to surrender their employment.

Driverless cars refer to a vehicle that runs over the roads without a manual resource holding on to the steering. According to a report of The Autonomous Vehicle Readiness Index (AVRI), out of the 25 countries, India ranked 24th, that shows the readiness of countries to adopt driverless cars. The top 5 positions were held by The Netherlands, Singapore, Norway, USA and Sweden. India was just a place above Brazil and a place below Mexico. The major countries of Europe such as England and Germany occupied the 7th and 8th positions respectively while Japan and China ended up being 10th and 20th on the rankings.

Why Driverless Cars?

• Cars running on the roads would undoubtedly add up the leisure and comfort to lives. You can reach your destination with the utmost relief and comfort.
• Listen to the songs, or watch complete web series without worrying about getting distracted while driving.
• The road traffic accidents due to the errors of drivers would get reduced which would result in a reduction in the number of deaths caused by road accidents.
• The tamed technology would follow the traffic rules and could improve the condition of traffic in India.
• The journey would get smoother with quality sleep, rest, enjoyment and also the time consumed to cover long distances would shrink.
• Range of detection of minor hurdles over the roads would get easier to be traced by the efficient technology-based driverless cars.
• As the Indian population is increasing day by day, so the parking hurdles won't interfere with your working time slots, the car would manage to park itself.
• The well-maintained efficient cars would help the environment being eco-friendly.

Why Not In India?

• Due to poorly maintained roads, the allowance to driverless cars is not practically possible in India.
• A driverless car would undoubtedly be highly expensive and is not affordable for around 65- 70% of citizens.
• As India is already dealing with the excessive unemployment issues, and excision of manual labour in the driving field would stack up the unemployed drivers. The country has around 40 lakh drivers and still demand 25 lakh more drivers.
• Any sudden technical issue can lead to jammed roads and abrupt traffic conditions.
• Any software can be hijacked by a brilliant notorious mind and this may lead to increased criminal instances.
• A well-known fact, a puddle in rains and a pothole is very easy to find on roads of India, and it would require large iterations of training the software of the driverless car before it can accurately detect the potholes.
• The worsening weather conditions and unpredictable thunderstorms and cloud bursts can hinder the network and connectivity of driverless cars.
• The technology can have efficiency at its peak but it can never get blessed by the cognitive abilities at the level of the human brain, sudden decision-making alterations.
• A trained technological device won't react to every gesture, sound or the traffic policeman.

The Midway:

• As per the present condition of India, the effectiveness of driverless cars stands afar. We need a lot of alterations to achieve the complete readiness to allow the driverless cars to rush through dream paths. Till the time we can go for a midway opinion:
• Instead of driverless cars, automated cars can be allowed where the cars can run under the guidance of a human brain.
• Lanes could be improved and more efficient sensors could be installed over tolls.
• Traffic rules could be improved and made a bit strict so as to discipline the traffic.
• The skilled drivers can be appointed to guide the technologist to incorporate the needed specifications to design the suitable cars that can deal with the roads of India.
• Research and development need to be done to bring about improvements in the driverless cars in terms of their performance and reaction to the environment.

To Infer:

In this technological and rushing era the developing nation, India is still not prepared for driverless cars because of the poorly developed road network as well as the high rate of unemployment in India. Before aiming at peak technology, India has to work a lot over strengthening the foundation and creating other job opportunities for future minds.


“Plan the development aiming the needs,

Not just following what the developed feeds".


- Arpita Tiwari

- Purav Nayak


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