Reading a recent article in the NY Times entitled "
Drivers With Hands Full Get a Backup: The Car"
As a person the drives a manual transmission vehicle and is of the opinion that people that cannot drive a manual transmission actually do not know how to drive *snicker*. That is, persons who cannot drive a manual transmission vehicle have not mastered a machine but rather know how to point and press.
It is said that BMW added cup holders to it's vehicles after much debate because it was simply unfathomable to some at HQ that people would actually be drinking any liquid AND driving (the horror!). Surely someone in a "performance" machine would at least have one hand on the wheel and the other on the gear lever.
Alas the coffee drinkers of the world won out and now even the vaunted M vehicles not only come with cup holders but sadly automatic transmissions with "manual mode" which on my testing is pure rubbish. The amount of lurching the X3 I tested did when I "changed gears" via the manumatic was reminiscent of first learning how to drive. I left it in D and put on eco mode and left it there.
Anyway, the automation of the transmission (which also made vehicles far more approachable for women) was the beginning of the automation of the driving experience. Today one finds many articles about the new features on vehicles: Automatic parking, automatic and adaptive cruise control and upcoming fully self-driving vehicles.
There are two large reasons for this push, the first being "safety". You will not read a single article on autonomous vehicles that does not emphasize safety. Like much else in America, fear of injury, disease or death sells. You may get hit. You may hit someone or something. YOU cannot be trusted so you must hand over control to that which canbe trusted: The computer.
I read one article on Google's test vehicle that pointed out that it's vehicles do not get road rage, get distracted, etc.
In the near future as automated vehicles become mainstream (probably linked with the widespread adoption of purely electric vehicles AKA: Computers on wheels). We will see arguments against human operation very similar to the arguments I see in regards to guns in America: It's dangerous and threatens the lives of other "motorists" (I prefer in this case to refer to them as passengers) and pedestrians.
Recall in I, Robot the horror expressed by the authorities and the female lead that Will Smith's character was actually driving his high tech automated vehicle in manual mode ("at those speeds" to quote the character). Now look at the text from the linked article:
Driving around a college campus can be treacherous. Bikes and scooters zip out of nowhere, distracted students wander into traffic, and stopped cars and speed bumps suddenly appear. It takes a vigilant driver to avoid catastrophe.
Jesse Levinson does not much worry about this when he drives his prototype Volkswagen Touareg around the Stanford University campus here. A computer vision system he helped design keeps an unblinking eye out for pedestrians and cyclists, and automatically slows and stops the car when they enter his path.
Can you feel the feelings of panic in these opening paragraphs? Quick question: How many car accidents involving pedestrians, cyclists and motor-scooters happen on Stanford University's campus? According to a
February 2010 report, there have been 200 accidents on Stanford's campus since 2005. That works out to 40/year. The one in this report ended in a death because the cyclist was not wearing a helmet and it is undetermined as to whether he had his light on (which is required for night riding). I have not seen (or looked for) how many of the 40 accidents a year at Stanford are a result of intoxication or events such as deer. However; reading this one would think that one must be in a state of hyper vigilance as if one were in an open battlefield with a known sniper somewhere in the vicinity. Look it's NOT like that.
But the point here is to induce feelings of fear in the reader. The reader doesn't want to feel fear and anxiety. They don't want to hurt another person. Sell them a self driving "omniscient" vehicle and put their minds at ease. What
responsible persons would turn that down.
One of the problems with these electronic "eyes' is that the "driver" learns to depend on them and loses lessons of "looking around". I foresee a time when drivers will lose the skill of looking around as they drive. Actually, in my travels I've noticed that this skill is already lacking. Also these backup cameras and the like are leading vehicle makers to design vehicles with extremely poor visibility. High trunk decks and small side and rear windows have become common in SUV's and some "sporty" vehicles.
Once the "responsibility" argument is established we get to think of these items as "necessary". As indicated in the article:
Dr. Rajkumar said he suspected that most Americans were not quite ready for a fully autonomous car.
But, he said, “In time, as society becomes more comfortable and legal concerns are ironed out, full autonomy will become practical, inevitable and necessary.”
Necessary? Says who? Millions of vehicles are on the road today. A small minority of them are involved in accidents and a smaller minority of those involve actual bodily harm and a smaller percentage of those result in fatalities. How are automated vehicles "necessary"? Define "necessary".
Lastly Dr. Rajkumar says:
He, for one, would welcome an automated car for his 30-minute commute home. If the car could drive itself, he said, he would happily take a short nap.
I humbly suggest that if the good doctor is too tired to drive that he take public transport both to and from work.
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