Driverless cars are necessary for India, tackling inadequate road infrastructure is a challenge: Vivek Wadhwa

Driverless cars are necessary for countries like India that have high accident rate, said Carnegie Melon fellow and former entrepreneur Vivek Wadhwa. However, he also cautioned that such technologies would struggle here initially because of the inadequate road infrastructure.

“Driverless cars would have fewer accidents and the electric cars would start and they would have less pollution. India desperately needs that because traffic is in such a mess,” said Wadhwa. Over its future implementation, he said: “It would happen region by region and city by city and neighbourhood by neighbourhood.” According to him, this technology would be driven by the entrepreneurs.

Moreover, it would have impact on the business of the insurance companies because the number of accidents will decrease. It is going to wipe out the insurance companies as their 40 percent business comes from motor accidents. Globally experiments are going on autonomous cars, which are also known as driverless cars or self-driving cars. They are capable of sensing their environment and navigating without human input.