Who wants a self-driving car?

"Next Year," says GM.

Have you wondered who wants a self-driving car?

Drunks! Drink with reckless abandon and get home safely. The party never ends! Except perhaps the next morning.

The elderly will love the ability to maintain independence past the age where driving is safe. “Take me to my grandchildren, Bessie.”  You'll get to name your car, of course.  Just like your your forefathers and foremothers.

Parents of teens will be able to put their rebellious offspring behind the wheel in learn-to-drive mode where the car takes over when a really bad decision is made. But why teach them to drive at all when they’ll never need the skill? Did your parents teach you how to drive the buckboard?  To churn butter?

Moms with kids will find self-driving cars to be a godsend. “Take Suzie to her soccer practice," and, "Take Billy to school since he missed the bus, AGAIN!” Mission accomplished, the car returns home so Mom can go about her business.

Baby won’t sleep. Send him to Toledo and back. Callous disregard for the welfare of a child? Naw, the video feed will let you know if there are any issues. OK, Toledo may be an exaggeration. You only need to drive around the neighborhood.

Tired people. Get that extra hour of sleep while you are transported to work.

Entertained people will watch shows and play with a myriad of social media friends, both coming and going.

Over-achieving people. Complete that extra hour of work while you are transported to work. Another on your way home. Hours more per day than the tired or entertained people! The promotion is assured!

And me...As a drunken, elderly, mostly blind and deaf person with partial use of my limbs, I really need a self-driving car. All of you will be safer because I have a self-driving car. In fact, I think I’ll start a Go-fund-me campaign to help you help me keep all of you safe.

It will soon be a wonderfully safer world in which we will no longer shrug at 10s of thousands of highway deaths and say a little prayer each time we hear the statistics and remember that our children are out there on the roads. Humans are just too unsafe to be driving. Robots are sooooo much better. No distractions, no drowsiness, no aggressive robot drivers.

Still a few bugs in the system.

Somewhere down the road, we humans won’t be able to drive ourselves. Won’t be allowed. Not safe. You wouldn’t have an airplane without auto-pilot, would you? There will be private parks where aficionados will go so they can drive fully manual vehicles at unsafe speeds, which is anything over 3 miles per hour for a human pilot.

But we’ll have fun, fun, fun ‘Til Big Brother takes the T-bird away…

And the vehicles will be safer.  No need to make a car that can go 100 MPH.  And no need to drive at breakneck speeds if you can be checking Facebook's data-secure replacement while you're traveling.  And since you'll be facing backward in a comfy bucket, even an unusual and misnamed "Head-on" crash will be much more survivable.  With no expensive and dangerous air bags!

Eventually, we'll see new cities spring up, or old ones redesigned to take advantage of the new mode of personal transportation.  Red light?  What's that?  And what was it for?  Any time a junction is necessary, tight little rotaries will handle the job so much better.  But wait a second, who needs rotaries when high-speed cooperation is programmed in?  East and Westbounders will zip through intersections without hesitation, timing passage through the shared space so that large safety margins of a few millimeters are maintained from those vehicles moving north and south.  Even when traffic volumes become heavy, staggered alternating cohorts of vehicles will pass in a manner that maximizes efficiency. 

Steering wheel?  How archaic.

But it ain’t all fun and games.

"I'm going to keep driving my car, dammit!  I've been driving for over 50 years, and I don't need no robot to get me around. " You think so?  The "hive" of autonomous vehicles that can move their occupants more efficiently and with much less chance of mayhem will push you to the fringes, if not literally, certainly via legislation.

What will those traffic camera companies do?  The communication between the self-driving cars and the global traffic database will supplant their function with millions of cameras and sensors, and at the same time, ruin a fine revenue stream for municipalities.  No more nasty little tickets in the mail for running the red light.  No more flashing lights in the rear view mirror.  No more traffic control employment for State Troopers.

How many body shops will each city need if there are almost no collisions?

Insurance premiums are based on one's driving record, and that of the same demographic.  It's quite likely that Google or Uber or Tesla's driving records will be better than any humans.  Will states continue to require insurance?  Will your agent be able to feed her children?

Google's Waymo shows that self-driving cars can also be stylish.

Get me to the church on time?  Not if you started too late.

Truck drivers? Get in line with the railroad firemen and telephone switchboard operators. Coast to coast with no rest stops or bathroom breaks. Optimum speed for minimizing fuel consumption. Robot mechanics on call along all the interstates, never more than a few miles away. Right at this moment you might want to think about selling your rig to some unsuspecting fool who dreams of the freedom of the open road.

Uber drivers? Collect your meager money now...your days are numbered. Who needs you when there is a fleet of lower cost self drivers out there? And no discussion of tips, ever again.  Do you tip vending machines?  I didn't think so, but I must admit there have been times when I've tipped the scales.

UPS and FedEx will still exist, but the entire human workforce for the US of A will fit in a self-driving city bus. After the roboplane is unloaded by robotic fork-lifts, and your parcel is inserted into the proper bin that will be loaded into the robotruck, the self-driven truck will pull into your driveway while a short range autonomous robot will hop out and unceremoniously dump your package in some inappropriate place and then ring the doorbell. Unless, of course, it was placed in that same inappropriate spot by a computer controlled drone. But that’s OK, because your self-aware home will know exactly where the package hid itself, and will train the cameras and laser branding tools on it, just in case. But I’m getting ahead of myself here.

Car thieves no longer need to jumpstart the car. Just hack in and drive it directly to a new location. Strip out the tracking and start anew!

Self-driving cars are a bonanza for those with problems with the prevailing ideologies of society. No need to convince anyone they will be serving God by blowing themselves up... Robbie Robot will do it with full compliance. Does Robbie know or care if that's a cake for Grandma or a box full of explosives? Just send him to the location and push the button. And if you need a human in the car to enable the trip, just grab anyone, duct tape him into immobility and send him off. 

Need other options? Terrorists need only hack the guidance system and send the truck into the mass of humanity at the public market. Or the elementary school recess. Or the line at the release of the newest Apple device.  

An astute non-terrorist friend has suggested that the explosives and murderous routes may be unnecessary.  Just program a few trucks to stop in unison on any highway in any major city and the disrupted flow of traffic will have ill effects far beyond any little bomb.  I-95 anywhere from Richmond to Boston?  401 in Toronto?  California's Fabulous 405? 

But those long lines of traffic, and that long line of iPhone purchasers will become shorter and shorter as time goes on, because most humans will become irrelevant. And when you’re irrelevant, you can’t afford the latest Apple device. Or a self-driving car.

Many thanks for the valuable input and perspectives 
of Roland Schindler and Ed Covannon. 

All images used without permission.

The Pothole

 

This satellite photo does not properly reproduce depth

Mary entrusted me with the task of going to Wegmans Market for elements essential for dinner.  There were enough items to necessitate a half-size cart. 

Shopping complete after surviving the usual “Stranger in a Strange Land” emotional trauma resulting from negotiating a grocery store, I pushed the cart swiftly over the macadam toward the car, which rested peacefully where it had been parked beyond the crowd.

The cart stopped abruptly when the right front wheel descended into an unseen pothole. Had our progress been only a tad more rapid, my head would have gone over the handlebar and into concussion protocol.  Instead, I was able to sidestep the cart and even manage to avoid crushing any of the groceries that spread out across the parking lot.  As another distractible-yet-athletic klutz once said regarding his own misadventures, “A lesser man would have been killed!”

Two young women nearby rushed to my aid.  “Are you OK?” asked one as they helped me rebag the pudding, berries and celery, among other items.

“You’ve done this before,” I replied, impressed at the rapid manner in which my groceries were reassembled.

“We work here,” said the second, smiling.  “Is there anything else we can do?”

“You can tell management to fix the pothole.  Thanks for your help.”

I made it to the car without further mishap.  The bruises on my ego had already begun to heal.  As I stepped on the gas and made my escape, I realized just how lucky I had been.  The upended cart had been uncharacteristically devoid of bottled beer!