As those who frequent this blog must know by now, I’m fascinated with what I predict is the future regarding cars: They will all be self-driving. In fact, I predict that in the very near future people will no longer own cars at all. We will use our smart-phone and a Uber-like app to to call in a self-driving car and it will take us to our destination for a very low fee and, when we’re done at our destination and need to go somewhere else we again whip out our smartphone and viola! call in another vehicle to take us.
It wouldn’t surprise me if my daughters’ children (or, if there’s a delay, their children) wind up being the first generation of people who never bothered to learn to drive at all.
(A random thought here: How will movies deal with the idea of driverless cars? Will that action staple, the car chase, eventually disappear from films?)
Having said all this, we’re still a few years off from having that fleet of driverless vehicles at our disposal. In the meantime, Tesla has released a new model of their car and it features driverless functionality, though the auto maker is clear that this should be used as an aid to driving and the driver should not take their hands off the wheel even in the driverless mode.
Will Oremus over at Slate.com offers an interesting look at the current state of driverless vehicles and, specifically, the Tesla models and I encourage anyone who, like me, is interested in this topic read his thoughts:
The Paradox of the Self-Driving Car
What Mr. Oremus gets at is the thought in some quarters that if you’re making a self-driving vehicle, you should probably go all the way toward it, like Google is doing (ie eliminating the steering wheel from the driverless car and anticipating a future where all the cars on the road are driverless and therefore human error is completely eliminated).
Mr. Oremus points out that an “assisted” driverless feature like the one the Tesla may create bad habits in drivers. They may, for example, check whatever is going on with their smartphone more while driving using the feature, which Tesla clearly doesn’t want them to do.
But people are people and it isn’t surprising they indulge in stupid things they shouldn’t, such as…
Watch a Tesla being driven in autopilot – From the backseat
To say the least, seeing the above article/video made my blood freeze. Yes, I’m all in favor of driverless cars but Tesla has made it clear their driverless feature is NOT meant to be used like this.
Regardless, we most certainly are living in interesting times regarding cars. The driverless car is coming (if not already here) and, with technological advances regarding battery power, I suspect we’ll see the end of gasoline use as well.
An exciting -and, after seeing hte above video, scary!- time for sure.