Driverless cars are dull ... a Little Red Corvette sets the heart racing
The history of rock ’ n’ roll is a celebration of cars. From Chuck Berry’s Maybellene in her Cadillac coupe de ville, to Prince’s Little Red Corvette, and Springsteen racing in the streets with his hot-rod ’69 Chevy, the V8 engine is as vital to pop music as the electric guitar.
One question that the soulless Horizon: Dawn Of The Driverless Car (BBC2) failed to pose was: what rocker will ever write a love song to a robotic electric transport pod?
Could you have imagined Freddie Mercury belting out I’m In Love With My (Driverless) Car, or The Beatles harmonising on ‘Baby, you can’t drive my car because a computer chip does that, beepbeep-mm-beep-beep yeah!’
That’s the trouble with science. It doesn’t understand what matters.
Billionaire nerds such as Paypal founder elon Musk are filling labs with technicians to build selfsteering, battery-powered vehicles that can whisk us along motorways on autopilot.
But it appears they have never considered how much humans hate being at the mercy of moving machines. Many people loathe lifts, for instance, and would rather tramp up five flights than trust their lives to a thick metal cable. Chances are, those same people will be terrified in driverless cars.
Admittedly, this documentary did attempt to point out some of the drawbacks of ditching the driver.
A woman from New Scientist magazine said that more than half a million people in Britain earn their living behind the wheel of buses, taxis, hGVs and delivery lorries. What are they going to do for jobs?
It was obvious, though, that the producers didn’t really understand the first thing about mankind’s love affair with the internal combustion engine, when Sara Pascoe’s voice-over suggested that F1 racing cars could soon be guided solely by the onboard electronics — no temperamental playboy maniacs required.
At that point it became plain the whole concept makes no sense. Formula 1 without its Vettels and Schumachers is meaningless.
A few warning voices were hooted. One commuter sadly said the daily drive home with the radio blaring was a rare interlude in his day. If he was relegated to the role of passenger in an automaton, he would have to spend even more time reading emails.
The show ended with an impassioned inventor bragging that technology had brought a stream of improvements since the Stone Age, and driverless cars were another leap towards Utopia.
If that were true, Ross Poldark would look as dashing on an escalator as on horseback. Would your heart thrill to the Cap’n on a moving staircase, ladies?
Meanwhile, there was something of the automaton about Amber Wright, 20, a murderer from Florida who lured her exboyfriend to a brutal death when they were 15. She didn’t so much talk to Piers Morgan on Killer Women (ITV) as recite her lines mechanically. When he caught her in a lie, her internal program selected another defence tactic.
This series works best when scraps of doubt linger over the true facts. If there’s even a speck of danger that the woman in the prison jumpsuit is serving an unjust life sentence, we feel an involuntary rush of sympathy.
But there was no question about Wright’s guilt. She was a manipulative psychopath who should never be released.
The show only caught our emotions when the boy’s parents talked of their grief. The incredulous look on the father’s face, when the word ‘forgiveness’ was mentioned, told its own story.