From surgery to steering wheel: could driverless cars help the primary care workforce

Susanne Maxwell is a PhD candidate at the University of Edinburgh and a salaried GP in a small practice in Falkirk, Scotland. She is on LinkedIN

I have reached the end of a long session, seeing the wide range of conditions that I’ve come to expect on a busy Monday surgery: from feverish children to sudden bereavement, acute chest pain and everything in between. But before I can head home, I must complete my referrals, deal with acute prescriptions and action results still outstanding from the day. I get in my car to start my 40-minute commute home, my head buzzing as I try to process the rapid decisions I have had to make throughout the day. I roll down the car window in the hope the cold air will help me concentrate on the drive home.

When I finally arrive home, I start watching a new BBC documentary AI Confidential with Hannah Fry ‘Death by Driverless Car’. While I was already familiar with AI through tools like ChatGPT, I had not appreciated that self-driving cars are not a distant prospect for the next five to ten years but are, in-fact, already here.

Waymo, the US driverless taxi firm, has reportedly been planning a rollout of a driverless taxi service in London as early as September this year, subject to regulatory approvals, and already operates in San Francisco. Whilst the documentary explores some of the key concerns with driverless cars, particularly around safety, regulation and liability, I began to wonder how this technology might impact healthcare workers and primary care.

Working in healthcare often involves long shifts, irregular working patterns, including night shifts, and high stress environments. The effects of sleep deprivation on driver safety are well established.¹ In the UK, Brake, the road safety charity, reports that fatigue contributes to around 4% of fatal collisions in official police statistics, although the true figure is likely to be considerably higher at around 10-20%.²

There is also clear evidence that healthcare workers are particularly at risk.³ Worryingly, a study of NHS night shift workers in the UK found that 56% reported sleeping for 5 hours or less between shifts. After a night shift, 49% reported nodding off at the wheel, and 44% reported a near-miss car accident in the previous 12 months.⁴ However, it is not just sleep deprivation or shift work that can contribute to unsafe driving behaviour, but also work strain, emotional exhaustion and inadequate recovery.⁵ Many GPs are working 12 hour days, and I know myself that breaks are often taken up with house visits, administrative tasks or meetings.⁶

Self-driving cars do not fatigue like humans. Self-driving cars are not affected by emotions. After a long demanding shift, an autonomous vehicle could potentially provide a safer journey home and even an opportunity for rest.

However, autonomous vehicles may have implications beyond road safety. I began reflecting on the last hour of my day spent completing administrative tasks before I could leave the surgery. Could autonomous vehicles also make commuting time more productive? Referrals, results management, prescriptions and emails all mount up over the course of the working day, with little time to action during clinics. A self-driving car could allow the commute to become part of the working day, enabling some of this paperwork to be completed on the journey home, allowing earlier finishes and more time with friends, family, or personal wellbeing. However, this would have to be carefully managed to ensure it did not simply result in a longer working day.

I also began reflecting on my earlier house visit. Could house visits or community work become less time-consuming if consultations were written up while travelling rather than after returning to the surgery?

Not only could autonomous vehicles help streamline the working day, but they could have implications for rural healthcare. If commuting time could be used productively or for rest, it may encourage healthcare professionals to consider jobs further afield. This could help support staffing in areas that traditionally struggle to recruit.

Of course, all of this depends on the technology being rolled out safely, properly regulated, and environmentally sustainable. Autonomous vehicles will not solve the many workforce challenges facing primary care, but they may provide a small improvement to make the working day more manageable. Perhaps in the future the NHS might even provide a fleet of autonomous vehicles for staff who cannot rely on public transport, particularly those working in rural or underserved areas.

Personally, I look forward to a commute in the future that I can use productively to finish referrals or respond to emails – or perhaps simply to put my feet up, read a book and arrive home feeling refreshed.

References

1. Philip P, Sagaspe P, Moore N, Taillard J, Charles A, Guilleminault C, et al. Fatigue, sleep restriction and driving performance. Accident Analysis & Prevention. 2005;37(3):473-8.
2. https://www.brake.org.uk/get-involved/take-action/mybrake/knowledge-centre/driver-fatigue [accessed 13/4/26]
3. Bonnell N, Jamal K, Boicu B, Brubacher JR. Resident Physicians Have an Increased Risk of Adverse Driving Events Following Extended-Duration Work Shifts: A Systematic Review. Cureus. 2024;16(11):e73922.
4. Westwell A, Cocco P, Van Tongeren M, Murphy E. Sleepiness and safety at work among night shift NHS nurses. Occup Med (Lond). 2021;71(9):439-45.DOI: 10.1093/occmed/kqab137
5. Ismail K, Kamaruzaman H, Ibrahim M, Bryce J, Ismail R, Mohd Yusoff H. Unsafe commute driving behaviour among healthcare workers: a combined scoping review and concept analysis. Arhiv za higijenu rada i toksikologiju. 2025;76:148-58. doi: 10.2478/aiht-2025-76-3930
6. Hodes S, Hussain S, Panja A, Welch E, Shire R. When part time means full time: the GP paradox. BMJ. 2022;377:o1271. doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.o1271

Featured Photo by Ant Rozetsky on Unsplash