German Chancellor Angela Merkel claims that before long, driver’s licenses will be a thing of the past, because self-driving cars will become the norm. Against that backdrop, humans will need special permission from the government to manually operate vehicles themselves.

During a discussion with students in Buenos Aires, she specifically predicted that “In 20 years’ time, we will need a special permit to drive a car ourselves,” the 2025AD website reported.

Merkel is the same globalist, European Union-loving politician who threw open her borders to millions of refugees and migrants without realizing the consequences and in so doing destabilized the entire European continent. With that in mind, her predictive abilities are somewhat suspect.

Parenthetically, as Germany’s leader for 12 years, most likely she personally hasn’t driven a car for more than a decade, leaving that mundane task to underlings and bodyguards.

That aside, Merkel has a vested national interest automotive automation given that German companies such as Volkswagen, Daimler, and BMW have sunk big bucks into developing this technology, which they hope to bring to market within the next five years or so.  (RELATED: Read more about driverless cars at FutureScienceNews.com.)

In May, Germany passed a law allowing the auto industry there to road-test such self-driving or semi-self-driving car prototypes under certain conditions. Someone will be behind the wheel of the cars for legal liability reasons, Reuters detailed, however, and a flight-recorder-equivalent device will be mandatory.

The new legislation allows them to road-test vehicles in which drivers will be allowed to take their hands off the wheel and their eyes off the road to browse the web or check e-mails while the vehicle handles steering or braking autonomously.

The legislation requires that a black box record the journey underway, logging whether the human driver or the car’s self-piloting system was in charge at all moments of the ride. This will be crucial for apportioning blame in accidents.

The technology is still under development and it remains to be seen if it will pan out for day-to-day use. In this country, Google and Tesla are actively developing a self-driving car.

Natural News previously identified the safety features of self-driving cars that use GPS, internal navigation systems, and various sensors to detect other vehicles, cyclists, and pedestrians.

As a perceptive Natural News noted, however, that the banning of human-operated vehicles, or imposing a bureaucratic permitting procedure for that matter, portends a loss of privacy, human autonomy, and security. The latter is a reference to the potential danger from hackers commandeering a vehicle via a cyber attack for nefarious purposes.

Do you think that human-operated cars will eventually go the way of the horse and buggy?

Sources:

2025ad.com

Reuters.com