GM Says Driverless Vehicles May Be On Market In 10 Years. And if it’s on TV, or GM says it, then it MUST be true!
Why Don’t We Have Self Driving Cars Now?
We have BMW’s that can parallel park. We have Volkswagens that will slam on the brakes if something moves in front of us. We have backup sensors to ensure we don’t hit that other car or the back of our own garage. We have rear view mirror cameras. We have side view cameras. We have night vision cameras which look left and right at intersections. We have infrared cameras with overlays on windshields to identify heat signatures of animals and people at night. All of this helps people drive better, but it seems to me that it should help a computer drive our cars!
I Don’t Trust a Computer With My Life!
WHOOPS! Too late, you already do! If you go to a hospital, computers monitor your status and IV fluids, adjusting as necessary. Anything financial is computer ran and monitored. Your business information is all on a computer’s hard drive. You primarily communicate via email. Even if you use a phone, computer’s run the phone system. The military and government all use high level computing to run their most expensive equipment, monitor threats, direct troops and so much more. I hate to surprise you with this, but computers already control your life. Have you watched Live Free or Die Hard?
Computer’s Could Drive Better than Any Human
When NASA launches a space shuttle, the only “piloting” a human does is press the start sequence button. Computer’s take care of the rest. And if we’re trusting a computer to guide a multi-billion dollar rocket into space, why can’t we trust them to handle our commute? A computer does not get distrated with the radio. A computer does not have to put on makeup, or adjust it’s hair. A computer does not talk on a cell phone and ignore the road. A computer does not get tired or fall asleep at the wheel. A computer cannot become inebriated (drunk!) and kill innocent people. But people can… Why do you trust them to drive?
Were a computer driving a car it’s reaction times could be instantaneous. No more worrying about slamming on the gas instead of the brake, or calculating the time it takes to lift you foot from the accelerator to the brake. Instantaneous reaction to whatever situation. If a child runs in front of a new Volkswagon SUV, it stops the vehicle for you. Let the computer go forward, left and right as well.
Humans Can Only Concentrate On So Much. Computer’s Are Unlimited.
A person can see, hear, and feel. However, we are limited on how many of those we can do at one time. A computer has no such limitation. There are no blind spots for a computer. Imagine a machine that has a 360 degree view of your vehicle at all times. It can “sense” via proximity detection any other vehicle or object withing a hundred feet, or more, of your car. This machine would not attempt to make a lane change when it knows there is another car right next to it. A deer runs in front of the car, the machine noticed it one hundred feet into the woods because of it’s heat signature and immediately slowed when the deer dashed onto the road. All this time, you’re sitting in the drivers seat, reading a book or watching the news.
Computers Are Networked, So Shall Our Cars Be
A stoplight turns green. The first 10 vehicles accellerate at exactly the same time and speed. Three times as many cars can make it through a stoplight each cycle. Your vehicle is driving you to work this morning and receives a message for a car 5 miles ahead that a traffic accident has occured and you should immediately detour. The car makes the necessary adjustments, and you keep sipping your coffee. All this would be possible if computers drove instead of us.
Turn The Wheel Over
It’s time to relieve your lead foot and the control freak, white knuckle grip on the wheel. Computers already handle and control every aspect of our lives. It’s not going to change. Having a computer drive is a far better idea than a person. Hopefully GM delivers sooner, and I would love to be reading instead of driving!
This is perfectly well and good as long as MS is not writing the OS for the thing to run on. It kind of frightens me to think of the catastrophe of your car swerving into oncoming traffic because the sensor on the left side of the car (right for you Europeans) says that you are too far from the center line erroneously.
The other problem is that a computer has no capability to make choices. If a crash is inevitable then the computer will decide to protect the driver and passengers of the car. Well, what if your choices are hitting a tree that just fell or running over a small child that just stepped onto the road from behind an embankment. The computer will “decide” that the child has less impact on the car. Computers would likely be able to react faster (we hope), but there still remain physical laws that the computer must operate the car within. The moral decisions that a human can make on the fly are not programmable at this point and therefore we should never (until there is some new breakthrough in technology or technique) let computers drive our cars.
You might say that the price the little girl pays is dwarfed by the astounding number of lives this would save, but I will let you justify that to her parents. This nears the forbidden experiment in moral ramifications.
Hope that shows some of the potential problems/downsides we have yet to consider with this issue.
D
Dweh, you would sacrifice the lies of innocent bystanders to save the life of a delinquent child? If the child runs into the street and is hit, that is a clear case of survival of the fittest. That child will be less likely to pass on their run-into-the-street genes to future generations.