Speaking of Sobriety - AUTOMATED CAR SOAPBOX TIME

This study shows 1 in 10 binge drinkers gets behind the wheel and attempts to drunk-drive home.

How many people, TAE asks himself almost daily, have to die on our roads before we buck up and let computers drive us to and from our places of interest? I have, over the last 18 months, enumerated on several occasions my belief that not only would automated cars save lives, but they'd save money, and save time.
The bizarre thing is that cars that drive themselves is no longer a question of inventing the technology, its becoming a question of human dignity. People can no longer argue that "some day in the future" cars will be able to drive themselves, because they already can. The new Mercedes can parallel park itself, detect when the driver gets sleepy and sound an alert, detect when the car in front of it slams on its brakes and it does likewise, can course-correct if the driver veers over the dividing line between lanes, and pretty much anything else you can think of to keep the driver from being...well...human.
DARPA has an ongoing competition in which automated vehicles travel across rugged terrain.
GPS navigation systems can now tell you exactly where you are to within 3 feet or less, and good car GPS systems can even tell you if you are in the wrong lane of traffic for your upcoming turn.
A remote control system to drive a car, like the kind they use on Mythbusters when a car is going to do something unsafe for a driver, can now be acquired for less than a thousand dollars, and can be installed by someone with no experience in mechanics.

So wait, we can install in our cars systems that allow them to drive themselves, systems that allow them to know where they are exactly, systems that allow the steering, gas and brakes to be remotely controlled, and systems that allow the car to navigate through sudden obstacles and rough terrain? What's the hold-up?

The answer, of course, can be found by looking in a mirror. Humans, by nature, love control, and nowhere is there a chance to exert more control than at the wheel of a 3500 lb. steel behemoth barreling down the highway at a speed faster than reflexes can handle.
Simply put, it is just going to take a fundamental change in people's understanding of what a "car" and a "commute" represents. The American people (and people in other countries too) will have to grasp the concept that getting in the car is simply the same thing as getting on the subway, or getting on the bus...a device for transit over which the passenger has no control other than their entry and exit points.

Mrs. TAE and I moved to a new apartment last weekend. My commute has shortened by about 10 minutes, depending on how lucky I am with the traffic lights. But it is still 25 minutes long. That is 25 minutes I could have spent today reading Mark Twain's "What Is Man" or taking a nap, or reading the newspaper, or watching out the window at the deer that are overpopulating a nearby park. Then, this afternoon, I have to drive almost an hour from work out to my parents farm to pick up The Abstracted Daughter. That's an hour I could spend doing paperwork for work (instead of losing an hour tomorrow morning doing it then), or talking on the phone with someone (since driving on the phone is deadly, I'll avoid doing it), or making a grocery list, or taking a nap.

I really think the sell for automated cars won't be the safety aspect; people will always claim that it's not them that is the unsafe driver, it's (amazingly) everyone else. It won't be the savings; a few hundred dollars doesn't compute with many drivers when they have to balance it against their lost control of their car.
What will sell automated cars will be the amount of free time gained by not having to concentrate on the road. It will be the 18% decrease in their commute time because automated traffic systems are more efficient than traffic lights and human drivers. What if every day I could sleep 8 minutes longer and still get to work on time? What if during the drive to work I could read the newspaper (a pleasure I rarely get to enjoy)? I absolutely would hand over the keys.

If you need other reasons why automated cars are a damn good idea, just take a moment, and remember that every 31 minutes someone is killed in a PREVENTABLE car accident in this country.


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