Trump acts out car crashes in the White House in criticism of self-driving vehicles

The president believes autonomous vehicles are 'crazy' and 'dangerous'

In addition to airplanes, Donald Trump also distrusts self-driving cars and reportedly imitates them going out of control and crashing.

President Trump believes autonomous vehicles are dangerous and “crazy,” Axios reported.

The website said Mr Trump also acted-out scenes of self-driving car crashes—sometimes crashing into walls—during conversations in the White House and aboard Air Force One, according to four sources who witnessed the president’s performances of hypothetical crashes.

“You know when he’s telling a story, and he does the hand motions,” a source told Axios. “He says, ‘Can you imagine, you’re sitting in the back seat and all of a sudden this car is zig-zagging around the corner and you can’t stop the f—-ing thing?’”

One source confirmed that Mr Trump is “definitely an automated car sceptic,” and another said the president previously said self-driving cars “will never work.”

It should be noted that many self-driving cars, including those sold by Tesla, allow human drivers to override the semi-autonomous programming.

Mr Trump apparently has a record of expressing his distrust with autonomous vehicles. He reportedly expressed some of his concerns at the Bedminster golf club in 2017 with another member who had recently bought a Tesla.

“And [Trump] was like, ‘Yeah that’s cool but I would never get in a self-driving car... I don’t trust some computer to drive me around,’” the unidentified club member told Axios.

The president’s fear over self-driving cars are valid. Like typical cars, autonomous vehicles can be hazardous and life-threatening. As Splinter pointed out, Uber’s testing of a self-driving car resulted in the death of a pedestrian. The accident prompted Arizona to ban self-driving cars.

Despite the president’s fears, the Trump administration is pushing for the implementation of new technology to advance autonomous driving technology including self-driving cars and hyperloops.

Sources told Axios that Mr Trump could halt these efforts if he wanted to.

Axios reported, “Trump already calls self-driving cars out-of-control death traps, so any news fueling that fear could jolt him into action.