Have you noticed how somewhere between the millennium bug that never happened and the flying cars which were forecast to be a reality by 2010, certain tech has tended to undergo readjustments in just as dramatic a fashion? Well perhaps not as dramatically and maybe in more of a low-key manner, such as the development of the driverless cars concept.

What on earth ever happened to driverless cars? Shouldn’t we have them mass-produced by now to reduce accident rates associated with human error and to increase efficiency? It’s not like the required technology does not exist. If you head online, you would be able to find the best site of companies like Torc Robotics that have developed the technology to create autonomous trucks for freight and other such business sectors to transport goods from one place to another. We assumed that by now everyone would have an autonomous car in their garage, which is naturally not the case.

The truth is the concept of driverless cars is still being heavily researched and developed, with many tests of driverless cars going on all the time, but that market seems to have changed its tune a bit. There are some security concerns which seem to be a bit too expensive to try and build their solutions into what is earmarked to be the first wave of driverless cars, the most challenging of which seem to be what happens in the event of a malfunction — well that and the possibility of hacking. I mean the internet by itself has proven time again that if enough hackers are hell-bent on breaching a system in some or other way, they’ll eventually manage, even if only on a small or symbolic scale that doesn’t induce too much damage. Who can really afford to take that risk with driverless cars though, which will undoubtedly have to be connected to the internet?

What has actually happened in the meantime however is that the driverless car manufacturers have changed their core offering, no longer dubbing their cars driverless cars, but rather referring to them as automated cars which assist drivers. It’s perhaps a regulatory hurdle that needs to be cleared, but for now we’ll have to wait a while yet before we can start really worrying about the security surrounding driverless cars.