EDITORIAL: Will self driving taxis be our answer to nights out in rural Ireland?

Self-driving cars and eventually taxis possibly becoming available in the future here in Ireland is an exciting thing to hear.

Not just because it surely will lead to safer driving for everyone, but also will mean there will be more taxis available, and even more nights out in rural Ireland.

Ireland’s drink driving laws are strict, like most other European countries. The Blood Alcohol Concentration limit is 50 milligrams (mg) for all drivers, and 20mg for learner or novice drivers.

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With the recent talk of self-driving cars, I feel they’d be so useful for solving the problems with living in rural areas. Often, people living in villages who do not easily have access to lifts cannot go to the pub to socialise.

Indeed, this is often an issue Kerry’s Healy-Rae brothers have brought up in the past. Rural isolation does not just happen to older people, however.

It is impossible to get a taxi to take you past a big town nowadays. A person’s only option of a night out when living outside a town is to get a lift from someone.

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Self-driving cars, if made legal in Ireland, could change all of this. Of course a person who is drinking alcohol cannot ‘drive’ a self-driving car, but they can hop in a ‘robotaxi’, as they’re called.

In the United States, Waymo has started trialing these self-driving taxis in Phoenix, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Austin.

Self driving cars becoming available in Ireland would also solve the problem that we have been seeing in recent years, of declining numbers of taxis around the country.

Of course, I would still prefer to hop into a taxi with a human driver at the end of the day and pay towards a person's salary, however, if taxi numbers continue to decline, this could be one solution of ensuring more taxis in the country.

Thanks to the progression of artificial intelligence, this could be our reality soon.