Buckle up, driverless cars are coming
Remember back in the olden days (2010) when Apple co-founder Steve Jobs introduced the iPad to a fair measure of skepticism? Who would want to lug around a glorified Etch A Sketch? It briefly looked like this could be Jobs’ Folly.
Jobs merely had to convince people they would develop the same addiction to a tablet as they did to its diminutive sibling, the iPhone.
The driverless car defines itself. We all got the concept at hello. Until the vintage promise of “flying car” is realized, this seems like an inevitable next step in Americans’ infatuation with the motor car.
The race is on between manufacturers and states. Connecticut, which has recently been The Land Wary of Embracing New Habits, is stepping on the gas with the formation of the Autonomous Vehicle Task Force. The 15-member panel is researching best practices about the technology in anticipation of producing a report for the state legislation in January.
“If you remember the internet in the ’90s and then iPhones, and now within 15 years we can’t live without it,” said state Sen. Carlo Leone, D-Stamford, who is co-chairman of the task force. “It’s how autonomous vehicles and artificial intelligence will grow. It’s really the future going forward.”
It’s the right move, and a challenging one. For all the promise of driverless cars, it remains a discomforting notion for many people. Part of Connecticut’s research involves a pilot program in four communities. Stamford, which has asked to participate, is considering shuttling them around its transportation center.
One lesson that’s already been learned is the value of the co-pilot in the testing stage. When a driverless Uber vehicle failed in Tempe, Arizona, in March, the backup driver was looking away and a pedestrian was struck and killed.
It was a technological and a human failure. Testing vehicles around the busiest Metro-North stop on the New Haven line doesn’t seem like a best practice, but there’s no escaping the reality that there will eventually be live, unknowing guinea pigs in the crosswalks. We’d like to see how the vehicles handle tapping the brakes several times a minute in Interstate-95 traffic, even if we’d prefer not to have one in the rear-view mirror at the time.
“This will happen fast,” Leone said.
It must not happen too fast. The technology will take as long as it takes until it’s ready.
Drivers on our roads have not shown the needed adaptability. The cliché of drunks stumbling out of bars and parties with keys in their hands is no longer the greatest threat on roads. There have been some dips in distracted-driving deaths, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, but it’s almost impossible to glance through windshields and not catch drivers using their smartphones inappropriately.
It’s unfortunate that one technology is needed to thwart the perils of another, but we prefer those odds to the alternative of trusting drivers to put down their phones.
The driverless car defines itself. We all got the concept at hello. Until the vintage promise of “flying car” is realized, this seems like an inevitable next step in Americans’ infatuation with the motor car.