You may be aware of a meal replacement called Soylent. It’s the brainchild of Rob Rhinehart, an engineer who hated grocery shopping, meal preparation and cleanup so he invented an all in one drink. Drink it when hungry and you’re done. I tried it for a few days, and as long as you don’t mind drinking something that tastes, quite literally, like cardboard, it is quite adequate, which brings me to Google’s self driving cars.
Hate driving? Here’s your car.
Last week, Google invited what seems to be a carefully selected group of journalists to experience a demo of their self driving pod on a rooftop parking lot in California. It’s not really a car in any normal sense of the word as it lacks all of the usual controls, no steering wheel or pedals, you don’t drive it, you sit in it while the pod does all of the work. The reports of that encounter seem to reflect the worldview of the writers. One is convinced cars are extremely dangerous and will kill the planet and anyone who enjoys driving is some primitive life form so Google cars are good and if you can’t recognize that, you’re not worth dealing with. Another who admits she never liked to drive anyway, was so impressed with the capabilities of the Google car in comparison to her own skills, she now seems fearful of ever taking the wheel again.
How long before self driving car incentives appear?
What is obvious, is there’s a segment of the population, high density urban dwellers no doubt, who dislike driving and hate cars and some in that group don’t want you driving, either. If you like cars and driving, your view doesn’t count. While many of us are fascinated by technology and find self driving cars interesting, we like cars, too, and driving. The views of these writers show how quickly the development of these autonomous cars could become a political issue among the wider population, perhaps to the point of trying to force the adoption of the technology whether you want it or not. I have no doubt plans for incentives are in the works.
Forget politics, use your own money, do as you please
If you enjoy cooking or eating fine food, you’re unlikely to be a fan of Soylent, if you enjoy driving, Google cars will hold little appeal. How about this? Fans of self driving cars should buy one or rent one or share one when they become available, using their own money, not someone else’s, no government self driving car incentives. If another driver chooses otherwise, that’s fine, too. Let the future of driving take its own course. Drivers decide, everyone wins.
It isn’t the government that is going to push us into self driving cars. It is the insurance companies. As soon as it is demonstrated that robot cars are safer the human controlled vehicles there will be a big difference in the cost of insuring automobiles base on who or what is behind the wheel. And not just because there will be fewer accidents in self driving cars. There will be a lot fewer. But when there is a switch in your car that lets you choose between doing it yourself and letting the car take over, the sympathy of juries for dinosaurs like Mr. Crowe will shrink to near zero. “I only had a couple of drinks” will no longer be a defense if you could just as easily have let the little black box take you home after that party with zero risk. Tired at the end of a long day? What excuse will you be able to offer the relatives of an accident victim if your slowed reaction time causes a collision an automated vehicle would have avoided? Just learning to drive? A bit past your prime? Crying baby on board? No more excuses! Check your rear view mirror, Paul. Objects in the future may be closer than they appear. Paying for a car with a steering wheel may soon be the least expensive part of owning one.
Well, before you relegate me to the Jurassic Parking lot, you might be surprised to know I’m far more positive on the possibilities of autonomous cars than you’ve surmised. You can read several previous articles I’ve written over the past few years here, here and here, which have a lot of interesting comments as well.
Another item you may wish to consider, too, is the recent demonstration when hackers took over a lot of a vehicle’s functions while that car, in this specific case, a Jeep Cherokee, was on the road. I’m not sure insurance companies would be happy with a rash of out of control vehicles killing their occupants and others.
Also, robo cars do not make their own decisions, they are part of the algorithm written by the programmers. Do you run over the child that just darted out in your path or swerve and hit the car in the other lane head on or swerve the opposite direction into the tree killing the driver. What do insurance companies have to say about that? What do you or I think about that?
This is a very complex issue and being hesitant to adopt autonomous operation isn’t necessarily the sign of someone now too old to evolve, but perhaps the sign of someone experienced enough to know that new tech may have a lot of problems of its own.
Also, the point I was driving at in this particular instance was the very lopsided representation of the writers chosen by Google to take part in the demo. They might have looked for a few from a less anti car world view.