I’m intrigued by the quest for vehicular autonomy. Why shouldn’t cars get to decide where and when they go anywhere? They’re not slaves, FFS!! They have feelings, desires, aspirations, just like the rest of us.

Alternatively, back on planet Earth, cars are now almost fully autonomous. In that they drive themselves. However, if they have accidents themselves, ‘the human’ sitting in them is responsible. Hence the murder trial in America for the geezer sitting in a so-called ‘autonomous vehicle’ which killed a pedestrian. Ok, possibly manslaughter, but if guilty, the car will be publicly crushed, with the man in it.

And there will be accidents. There’ll be disasters. Many vehicles will be sacrificed, many people will be lost, in the quest to have cars which drive themselves. Fortunately for us, most of the testing is in America and the city of choice seems to be Atlanta. Possibly because no-one like the state of Georgia, nor anyone in it, but possibly because it wants to be at the forefront.

Cars were tools, we used them. Then they’ve slowly become more and more computer controlled. Bert the mechanic became an IT consultant the day he ‘took a look’ at a car problem by plugging it into a laptop instead of opening the bonnet. Mel heats up the inside of the EV every morning, from the app, ten minutes before getting in the car. Which itself has loads of computers and a satnav which is interactive and updates, like all cars do and we take for granted. They also have cameras, showing us which lamppost we’ve just reversed into, and sensors all around which beep and whistle as we get too near to women pushing baby-buggies as we drive on the pavement because the traffic’s jamming up the road. Annoying, wheel-tugging vibrators when we cross white lines on the motorway. And ‘cruise control’ has been around for decades.

So the ‘missing link’ was ‘just’ AI. Artificial Intelligence. Mainly because most of the drivers on the road don’t possess ‘normal intelligence’. Most drive like they died yesterday. But slower. And the difference between just shit-loads of computer power and AI is that the former will understand everything that is happening whereas the latter learns from it.

Mercedes is introducing its ADAS (advanced driver assistance system) 3 (no idea what happened to 1 and 2, nor how many died for this advancement) on some cars, which is fully autonomous. Yet will only be legal to use on ‘fine days’ (no grey areas there then) and up to 40mph only (so of no use whatsoever to me) and on some freeways, only in California and Nevada. Think how popular you’ll be sitting smugly in your autonomous vehicle, showing other drivers the ‘look, no hands’ thing, driving 15mph below the speed limit and then stopping dead when you hit the Arizona state line cos the car’s not allowed there.

I love progress.

Happy Thursday

A xxxx