Driverless cars in the fast lane
Tech Life
BBC
4.3 • 227 Ratings
🗓️ 3 February 2026
⏱️ 27 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Autonomous taxis are already part of everyday life in some cities. What will it be like when self-driving car tech gets up to full speed ? And we find out how scientists are using quantum sensing technology to peer inside soldiers' brains on the firing range.
Presenter: Chris Vallance Producer: Tom Quinn
(Image: A Zoox robotaxi containing passengers is stationary on a road. The skyscrapers of San Francisco are in the background. Credit: Zoox, Inc.)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts. |
| 0:07.6 | Resolutions, ideas of being different. |
| 0:10.3 | Can we create long-lasting change? |
| 0:12.2 | Doctors Chris and Zand Van Tulligan are on a mission to help us take better care of ourselves. |
| 0:17.1 | You tried, it didn't work, what could you put in place? |
| 0:20.2 | And chartered psychologist Kimberly Wilson is on hand to help make sense of mental health. |
| 0:25.2 | We are constantly being told what's wrong with us, but there's so much that's right with us. |
| 0:30.7 | Reset and recharge with what's up docs and complex with Kimberly Wilson. Listen on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:37.8 | You're listening to TechLife on the BBC World Service, the program about technology and how it's changing all our lives. |
| 0:44.9 | I'm Chris Valence. And if you spend a large part of your life in the car, perhaps you're driving right now. |
| 0:50.8 | Tech is changing that as we speak. In a growing number of cities, autonomous vehicles are |
| 0:56.7 | leaving the lab and hitting the roads. Tech Life's Shona McCallum takes us on a journey to the near |
| 1:02.6 | future, by robot taxi, of course, and how quantum science is helping us understand what happens |
| 1:08.9 | to soldiers' brains when they fire one of these. The President. I'm Cars that can drive themselves have been just around the corner for, well, a long time. |
| 1:40.2 | This BBC report was broadcast in 1971. |
| 1:45.3 | The very last word is the totally automatic car, no driver at all. |
| 1:50.3 | The whole thing's remotely controlled by cables and electric routes under the road. |
| 1:55.1 | Steering, accelerating, gear changing, braking and stopping. |
| 1:58.7 | The radar device on the front will one day be able to tell |
| 2:01.4 | how near you are to the car in front of you and slow you down automatically. Basically, it's |
| 2:07.1 | all needed because you and I are not as good as machines. For years, a vehicle with a robot |
| 2:12.8 | driver was pure science fiction. But in 2005, I saw a first step on the road to making it a reality. |
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