National traffic managers should order car sharing, says Paul Mason in The Guardian

Information on planned car journeys should be pooled so a national traffic manager can mandate car sharing, economics journalist Paul Mason has urged.

Writing on The Guardian website, Mason advocates a "social solution" as opposed to ""totally autonomous vehicles following GPS routes carefully to their destinations". "The most advanced technology being applied to cars right now is arguably not in-car robotics but the intelligent transport systems being developed in cities. If you could automoate traffic flows - that is, mandate certain cars to go in certain directions and at certain speeds - you would have the makings of an automotive social network. This is the question all the auto-industry futurology avoids: the question of co-operation and control.

"If 50 drivers are individually plotting a route via GPS from Leicester to Liverpool, there is nothing to stop an intelligent system pooling that information and mandating the car space to be shared in order to reduce energy consumption; to simplify the journey; to allow a national traffic manager to prioritise or deprioritise what, effectively, could become a car-train."

Anticipating criticism of the idea, the author of Postcapitalism, said the "freedom" offered by cars, autonomous or otherwise, is "illusory". He writes as the Government-funded pilots of driverless cars get underway.