The Self-Driving Catch-22
There are laws in many states forbidding “distracted” driving – but what about the laws that encourage it?
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has given GM – and presumably, other car companies, too – the go-ahead to offer cars that can drive themselves for extended periods while the “driver” doesn’t.
GM’s system – marketed as SuperCruise – will be available next year in certain Cadillac models, including the CT6 sedan. It’s an advanced form of adaptive or “intelligent” cruise control that steers the car as well as maintains speed – accelerating and braking as needed with the ebb and flow of traffic, no input required from the “driver.”
Who can distract himself with other things.
Which is, of course, the only reason for bothering with this technology. The “driver” doesn’t have to. He can nod off. Text. Space out. Have a chat with his passengers. Maybe watch a YouTube video. That’s the sell.
Ok, great!
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But if the person behind the wheel (assuming there’s still a wheel) is also still expected to pay attention to the road and be ready to step in as the driver, it kind of defeats the point – doesn’t it?
But that is precisely what is expected.
It’s a hilarious juxtaposition, given the endless lecturing about “safety” emanating from NHTSA – the federal busybody-at-gunpoint agency that, somehow, acquired a parental interest (and parental rights) in every adult American.
And, of course, “the children.”
Other people’s, that is.
GM’s SuperCruise is fitted with a bevy of bells and whistles that are supposed to rouse the asleep-at-the-wheel (or texting or chicken-choking) “driver” when it becomes necessary for him to drive. If the “driver” doesn’t does so – perhaps he is sleeping soundly and fails to notice the bells and whistles – the car will automatically turn on its emergency blinkers and slow itself down.
This will probably not be much help if a split-second intervention becomes necessary. As, for example, when a self-driving Tesla drove itself broadside into a big rig that had unexpectedly turned in its path. Which the Tesla’s “driver” didn’t notice in time.
And there, as the saying goes, is the rub.
A driver either is – or he isn’t.
There is no in-between.
It is not a part-time job.
To whatever extent a car drives itself, the driver is necessarily less involved. Less is expected of him. He is encouraged to be passive, inattentive.
To let the car handle things.
This has been in process for a long time. Anti-lock brakes, for instance. They have been standard in pretty much all cars built since the late 1990s. Before ABS, drivers learned to fear skids – and loss of control. They tended to maintain a safe following distance, the motivation being that if you didn’t and the car up ahead slowed unexpectedly and suddenly, it was probable that you’d skid right into his trunk.
With ABS, people know the car won’t skid – and so tend to tailgate more than they used to and to drive not so much aggressively (a smear word used to bunch fast drivers who can drive in with reckless drivers, who can’t) as they do foolishly. See, for instance, all the jacked-up 4×4 SUVs in the ditch after a snowstorm. They over-drive the physics of traction, expecting the ABS (and traction control, there’s another one) to keep them on the road.
Sometime’s it doesn’t – because technology has its limits, just like human beings.
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