Motoring Alan Judd
DRIVERLESS IS COMING
It was a perfect drive: a break in the rain, almost no traffic, engine note strong and consistent, steering as direct as you could wish, suspension firm, seating high and upright, pedals, wheel and back at just the right angles, gear changes satisfyingly definite, visibility unimprovable. Driving doesn’t come better than this, I mused, perched atop my 56-year-old Fordson Major tractor.
Except that many people would much prefer never to drive at all and with the development of electrically powered self-drive cars their nirvana gets ever closer. Although it’s unlikely that self-drive cars will fill the entire road network, it is conceivable that within our lifetimes the ratio between self-drive and drive-yourself will be analogous to that between ebooks and paper books now. Both will survive, albeit perhaps with the old-tech versions becoming either niche-market or necessitated by function or network limitations.
Those who like driving, who derive tactile delight from manipulating a powerful machine, creating and controlling effortless motion, steering, accelerating, slowing, positioning, precisely gauging that corner, pointing that bonnet, often underestimate the number of others for whom none of this gives pleasure. There are millions for whom car ownership is not liberation but a costly burden, the machines themselves uninteresting and incomprehensible, driving a dangerous and fraught necessity. Already satnavs have relieved these millions of the anxiety of knowing where they are or where they’re going, so they’ll probably be very happy to hand over control of the whole noisy, smelly business to Google. Given that most accidents result from human error, they’ll be safer, too. It will be a boon for the disabled and the elderly, and presumably it won’t be an offence to be a passenger/hirer while drunk – or will it?
What’s more, it’s likely you won’t even have to own a car. You may simply summon one, paying by the hour, day or mile and despatching it when you’ve finished. Your street will no longer be clogged with parked cars, as ownership and permanent possession become a minority choice. A great relief for many.
But not for all. Those of us who enjoy the freedom of controlling motion ourselves won’t give it up. We’ll opt for it in cars that permit the choice, as most self-drive cars probably will, at first. We’ll also continue to drive older vehicles with noisy, polluting combustion engines, proceeding partly through the effort of our own sinews and muscles. This is what people mean when they talk about driving ‘feel’, as if your relation with the car is akin to that between you and an animal, working together.
My Fordson is a beauty, cheerful blue with orange wheels, a perfect marriage of form and function reflecting the old engineering principle – if it looks right it probably is. Every year there’s an old tractor rally in our village, when 70–80 noble beasts chug around the parish bounds, blissfully spewing C02 and diesel particulates. British tractors of the post-war period – Fordsons, Massey Fergusons, Nuffields and others – were simply designed and over-engineered, which is why so many are chugging still. There’s an integrity about them, a kind of honest old carthorse appeal, which spans the genders and the generations. They’ve even become collectable, which is why they crop up in classic car auctions at inflated prices. And most, like mine, are still working – you’ll find a Fordson in every forest – and demonstrating every day that you don’t have to drive fast to get pleasure.