Don’t let self-driving cars sneak onto our roadways
These potentially deadly devices need to be clearly marked, Lorraine Sommerfeld says.
I actually believe it does take a village to raise a child. But it sure as hell doesn’t take my village for you to test your self-driving car.
No, I’m still not over Uber testing its self-driving technology in Tempe, Ariz., in March of 2018. With the so-called safety driver behind the wheel as the car ferried itself around the city, a woman crossing the street with — not on — her bicycle was killed.
The vehicle never even slowed. The Verge reported that “Uber had disabled Volvo’s automatic emergency braking system in order to ‘reduce potential for erratic vehicle behaviour.’ ” The safety driver was watching The Voice on her phone, and Uber had previously cut the number of safety drivers in their experiments from two to one.
Hey, Uber. How do I hate thee? Let me count the ways.
I was recently at the Honda testing facility in Ohio, and part of its Honda Sensing safety systems is a pedestrian detection and collision mitigating braking system that stood that car on its hood to avoid hitting a pop-up fake pedestrian. My notebook flew off the seat.
Most manufacturers have a version of this now, and there is no excuse for a company like Uber to disable something like that, especially when they’re testing the accuracy of their mapping skills and hiring people who would rather be home on their couches voting for their favourite singer in some contest.
I’ve long been irked by Tesla installing something called Autopilot in its vehicles. The fine print always says “driver must remain able to take control of the car at all times blah blah blah” but you tell me what something called “Autopilot” means to average people.
You may think we love running video after video of morons literally asleep at the wheel. We don’t. People die. One driver, the fourth killed in similar circumstances, had Autopilot engaged and died when a large truck crossed his Tesla’s path.
It is deeply irresponsible not to take into account how your new product will be received and used by the general public. I remember (and I’m dating myself ) when we had to pull lawn darts from the shelves of the Consumers Distributing I worked at because a handful of people had managed to impale themselves with the metal shafts.
In hindsight, they were a little dangerous, but at least everybody in the yard knew they were flinging them around. Dumping self-driving cars on public roadways to test your tech and your theories? That’s just a lawn dart that comes out of nowhere.
Maybe it’s the media’s fault for the screaming headlines about autonomous cars and how the wave of the future is here now. It’s not.
Autonomous features? Now that’s a discussion worth having. Lane-departure correction, front-collision avoidance, parking assist, trailer backup: these types of systems are about safety.
Will they one day form the basis for autonomous cars? Sure they will. But having self-driving technology does not mean having the right to inflict it on the unwilling and the unknowing; other drivers on our roads are not your guinea pigs to perfect your technological skill set.
In some parts of the world, new drivers have a prominent sign or symbol on their car to warn those around them that a newbie is behind the wheel, and to keep some distance and cut them some slack.
If you want to toss a vehicle onto the roads in my city to test your autonomous technology, it better be lit up like a Christmas tree so I can decide if I want to take my chances stepping off a curb near it, or entering a lane of traffic.
Driving.ca