Undoubtedly there is something romantic and dare I say inherently American about two hands on the wheel and the breeze tearing through your locks on the open road. Nevertheless, most of us are not getting our kicks on the Mother Road but are rather hitting the mother lode of traffic on our daily commute.
It is this reason and obliquely my love of railway travel and wireless laptop computing that have me clapping for the DARPA project with both hands ( not to worry fellow drivers I am safely at my desk) and looking forward to the day when I let my Honda or Ford do their duty more or less autonomously.
I see a future through this technology that would allow for many of the things outlined in the BBC News article cited here such as remote driving of children and seniors about town to schools and shopping centers. For me this is terribly topical as in just the last few months we have seen people close to us here who are otherwise functional lose their license due to advancing age and with it some of their zest for life. Further, should I be afforded another hour of computing time while sitting in my car on US 23 everyday I could spend less time at the office and more time planning the renovations on my house or, heavens preserve us, spending more quality time with my lovely girlfriend, and loving family.
The title of this publication makes this painfully obvious but I for one see the responsible automation of the mundane to be largely if not wholly positive. Indeed, to wax more widely philosophical on the topic could this technology make it easier for us to truly see life as a journey as we recline and watch the world roll by on our way to the bakery or the bank, should those edifices still exist for the next generation?
I, for one, think it would and can think of many a road trip where all would have benefited from being able to experience the scenery and each other more completely rather than getting locked and loaded with maps and clutching the wheel for the one way 8 hour Enduro just to lounge on the beach for a few short days.
On a more practical note I think the section in the article that asks us to examine our thoughts as to why we feel that human drivers would be safer than computers is one that might sting our sense of rugged individualism to some degree. However I think this is an incredibly important question to ask and one that is perhaps best answered by your auto insurance premium statement and the sighting that you might have had this morning of a fellow motorist doing something completely unrelated while the car was effectively on autopilot anyway.
Ultimately the point is that cultural and environmental factors are quickly converging to make a transport egg with autopilot and sleep mode a lot more appealing than a red hot GTO that will smoke a quarter mile. Yes, the GTO is a lot more romantic but who needs horsepower when you've got auto valet and auto oil changes.
