We have all seen those videos where someone from many years ago tries to predict the future and gets it horribly wrong. I am still waiting for my flying car and the day when I can relax on the beach because a computer is doing all my work. However, sometimes the experts get pretty close, as illustrated by the recently released video from the BBC Archive which can be viewed below.  

First broadcast as a news item in 1971 the video looks at the future of motoring and makes some interesting predictions about driverless cars. It was filmed at what was then the Road Research Laboratory, now better known as Thatcham. 

The report predicts a UK car population of 30 million by the year 2000 and considering the experts had to crystal ball gaze 29 years they did well as the figure was actually around 27 million. 

The idea of monitors on cars controlling and paying road tolls was also pretty close, although it has become more digital and camera oriented than the wire in road method anticipated. 

The section on the loading and unloading of channel tunnel trains is also remarkably true to reality with the major exception being the 1978 opening date which was 16 years too optimistic. 

But perhaps most impressive was the section on driverless cars. The fact that the test car was a Mark II Cortina says a lot about the era these predictions were made in. Predicting automated cars controlled by cables and electric was pretty close to what is happening now, although again the idea of digital wireless technology seemed a step too far back then. The reporter even predicts the use of radar as means of keeping vehicle distance, which today we would call automated braking.  However the idea of all this technology costing £100 was at best ultra optimistic.  

Over all you would have to give the 1971 experts a 7/10 for their predictions which have certainly got the concepts right, if not the execution. It is certainly very doubtful that today’s experts would be so accurate about the cars of 2042 and beyond. 

One final thought Shock absorber and suspension technology has certainly come on leaps and bounds since 1971, as the bouncing stop of the Cortina at the end of the video shows.