"Leave the driving to us"

[zrath]

This was posted on a friend's LJ in reply to one of those "World Of Tomorrow" articles.
This particular article was "Life In The Year 2008" and was written in 1968.
I had a sort of epiphany...


I think I have gained an insight into why Americans don't seem to take driving seriously.
All these World Of Tomorrow articles always emphasize the automated highways and robot cars.
Americans don't want to drive, they just want to push a few buttons to program the car, then goof off playing poker or something.
Nowadays, they'd be talking or texting on their cellphones like mad, or surfing the Internet on their laptops.
I am aware that some people already do that.
Europeans are more involved in their driving. Driving education is tougher and more expensive.

I think distances also plays a factor. America is a big country, full of straight lines and gentle curves.
Europe is small and twisty and requires more driving acumen.

I am not ready to surrender my car to a robot.
I like being in control.


I can sort of see the appeal of computer highways and robot cars. It would cut down on the amount of idiots who
cut me off, throw themselves at me and my lil' truck, or just plain do absolutely some of the stupidest crap ever.
But I bet you the idiots who still find some way to screw things up.

You can pry the steering wheel from my cold dead hands! :D

Comments

[ihuitl.livejournal.com]

I find that the people who champion cars that drive themselves also tend to be the techno-geeks who are often on their laptops or cell phones or even iPods whilst driving in the first place. Having been a passenger in a car driven by one, I can assure you it is in everyone's interest to get these poor souls out of the driving loop by automating their rides. In the meantime, the rest of us who enjoy having skills beyond buttons and a screen can go back to driving ourselves without worrying about the car 'blue screening'.

[coyoteseven.livejournal.com]

I seriously doubt that an automated driving system AI would be run on a Windows PC platform. That would not only be overkill as far as computing power goes, but also wholly impractical.

Have you ever actually seen a real computer controlled car? It's an embedded system. It would likely use a real-time OS designed for such critical operations such as driving on a road or a highway. Anyone making such a system would be stupid to rely on a general purpose OS such as Windows.

Sorry, it's just that I saw a few assumptions being made here and I had to respond to that.

[ihuitl.livejournal.com]

Umm I was not speaking literally, but rather using 'blue screen' as a synonym for 'breaking'.

[coyoteseven.livejournal.com]

The kind of lawsuits you'd possibly see due to a faulty computer system causing traffic accidents and possibly deaths due to those accidents would cause such a debacle over their use. That's the main reason why I don't think you'd see them used, let alone made legal, anytime soon.

Like everything else, the technology will have to be proven safe before it is even considered. The closest we are right now to this is more like computer assisted driving, which includes things such as navigational aids and collision alarms. But the human driver is still the one in control of everything.