Okay so first of all, let me say this , the concept of self-driving cars is genuinely fascinating, like, you get in, say your destination, and the car just... handles it? no stress, no road rage, no accidentally running a red light because you were changing the song, sounds like a dream, right?
Yeah, a dream, because in reality? this thing has so many ways to go wrong it is almost funny.
The technology itself is not perfect. These cars use sensors, cameras, AI systems, and real-time data to navigate, which sounds impressive until you remember technology fails. Glitches happen, software crashes, and when your laptop crashes, you restart it, when a self driving car glitches at 100km/h on a highway? That is a completely different conversation.
There is also the weather problem, heavy rain, thick fog, debris on the road these things confuse the sensors, the car might misread the environment and make a decision that a human driver, with actual eyes and common sense, would never make, and then there is the hacking issue, If a car is connected to the internet and running on software, then it can be hacked, someone sitting in another country could theoretically take control of your vehicle, that's not science fiction anymore, that is a very real cybersecurity threat that nobody is talking about enough.
This is where it gets genuinely messy, If a self-driving car causes an accident and let's say it was a software malfunction, not anything the passenger did who is responsible? The owner of the car? they weren't even driving, the manufacturer? Maybe, but their lawyers will spend years arguing that the software performed correctly and it was external factors, the car itself? Well, a car can not exactly write a check.
Right now, the legal framework for this barely exists, most countries haven't even caught up with the liability questions, so in the meantime, regular people are stuck in the middle injured, dealing with insurance companies, and pointing fingers at corporations who have way more lawyers than they do, It is a mess, and the people with the least power will almost certainly take the worst of it.
Now let me bring this home. Nigeria.
Lol, Honestly, the moment I started thinking about self driving cars in Lagos specifically, I had to pause, Because Lagos is not just a city , it is a spiritual experience on the road, you have okadas weaving between buses, You have danfo drivers who operate on pure instinct and aggression, You have go-slows that last three hours, You have people selling groundnuts by knocking on your window in the middle of moving traffic.
What exactly is a self-driving car supposed to do with all of that?
The AI would genuinely short-circuit trying to understand why a truck just stopped in the middle of the expressway for no reason or why there are four unofficial lanes on a two-lane road, it why someone just did a U-turn on Third Mainland Bridge, the car would either freeze completely or cause more chaos trying to correctly navigate a situation that doesn't follow any logic a computer was trained on.
And that is before we even talk about road infrastructure, Potholes deep enough to swallow a tire whole, Unmarked roads, flooding in rainy season, no, truly self-driving cars in Nigeria would be comedy content for at least a decade before it became practical.
The idea is cool, the technology is interesting, but the world and certainly Nigeria , is not ready, The advantages exist, sure, but the disadvantages, the liability gaps, the infrastructure requirements, and the sheer unpredictability of human environments? Those problems are bigger than the solution right now.
Maybe someday, But today? Abeg, let a human drive.
