Most westerners distrust robots – but what if they free us for a better life? Tim Dunlop

I'm always amazed at people who tell me they would never trust a driverless car to take them somewhere but then happily get into a car driven by their teenager. Talk about preferring the devil you know. Driverless vehicles are likely to be much safer than those driven by humans. The safety differential is so large that insurance companies are already looking at alternative business models to make up for the fact that premiums will likely plummet once robots are driving us everywhere. The barriers to our transition to driverless vehicles, and to other forms of robot intervention into our daily lives, then, are not just technical but social, political and psychological.