India’s transport minister vows to ban self-driving cars to save jobs

Enlarge / Nitin Jairam Gadkari, minister of Road Transport, Highways and Shipping of India at the India Economic Summit 2016 in New Delhi, India. Copyright by World Economic Forum / Benedikt von Loebell (credit: World Economic Forum)

Companies in the United States, Germany, Japan, and other countries are racing to develop self-driving cars. But India's top transportation regulator says that those cars won't be welcome on Indian streets any time soon.

"We won't allow driverless cars in India," said Nitin Gadkari, India's minister for Road Transport, Highways, and Shipping, according to the Hindustan Times. "I am very clear on this. We won't allow any technology that takes away jobs."

In recent years, new technology has mostly created jobs for drivers. In India, the leading ride-sharing services, Ola and Uber, completed 500 million rides in 2016, creating work for Indian drivers. But Uber's ultimate goal is to introduce fully self-driving cars that will make these driving jobs obsolete.

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