Driving is already hard on the wallet, and it’s not going to get any better.

The cost of driving your own car could soon skyrocket, and driverless vehicles are to blame.

That’s according to an industry expert, who revealed to TrustedReviews that cars crammed full of technology will drive up insurance rates for conventional motors.

“You’re getting cars with 150 microcontrollers in there,” says Ian Drew, Chief Marketing Officer at chip design giant ARM. “You’re going to get into the realm of what you do with the data, and more interestingly, the weakest link in the car is the driver.”

“So with self-drive cars, the insurance industry will do the same thing they did with airlines, and go ‘we don’t want people flying and smoking at the same time, so we’re going to put rates up’,” he tells us. “If you look at cars, the same things will happen.”

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“Insurance on cars will go down with driverless cars, because there will be less accidents,” he adds.

Driverless cars, which ARM builds much of the technology for, are poised to enter the consumer market by around 2020.

Drew, and much of the industry, believe that many consumers won’t actually buy driverless cars, but instead use them as a pseudo-taxi service.

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“The riskiest thing in the car is the driver,” he explains. “So you’ll have a two world situation. You’ll have a world of driverless cars and a world of driver’s cars, and you’ll have a premium if you want to drive your own car.”

“I love driving. I’ll pay extra. But it really depends on how much extra. You’ve got to look at those rates,” adds the former Intel GM.

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Are you desperate to switch to driverless cars, or are you only happy when behind the wheel? Let us know in the comments.

Deputy News & Features Editor Writer.