Do you use ‘waze’? The sat-nav system favoured by Uber and so many others that Google bought the company a few years back. Its not just a ‘shortest distance between two points’ kind’a deal. Nothing like. It ‘knows’ where the traffic is, the roadworks, the speed cameras, and it avoids them. And it is, quite frankly, fucking brilliant. Not infallible, but it kind’a demonstrates the ultimate understanding that computers can take on new information, analyse it and spit out changes within milliseconds. So many websites that are allegedly ‘live’ (like Transport for London) give little information, virtually none of it being any use because the time signature was yesterday afternoon. When the computer operating union stopped for tea and went home early.

And waze is most impressive on short journeys that you do all the time. Because they’re the journeys for which we use ‘autopilot’. Waze is better. Mel had a nightmare journey coming back from her swim the other day (David Lloyd; 10 minutes away). So the next morning she used waze and it took her a route that indeed took her 10 minutes (the previous day was 40) but took her places she’d never been before. Over school playgrounds, through church car parks, down alleyways, over loads of speed bumps, and in and out of Sainsbury’s. Brilliant. Job done. Very few pedestrians injured. Just a few a bit scared.

I was in an Uber on strike day. And the driver’s ‘system’ crashed. The Uber system. He was fucked. We were round the back passages of some Islington council estate going through the garages when it happened. No idea where we were. Only waze knew, and it was not telling us. I accessed it on my phone and all was saved. Phew.

Systems crash. Its what they do. You’re writing an email and your screen freezes. Your ipad suddenly loses the screen you’re checking the football scores on. Its not often but its annoying.

So when you have your driverless car, what happens when the system crashes? Presumably you crash too. The metaphor becomes the reality. In a very dangerous way. Last year a Tesla on ‘self drive’ crashed in Ohio. Literally crashed. Into a lorry. The driver(less??) was killed. Wasn’t paying attention, according to the inquiry. But its a driverless car, no? You’re not supposed to pay attention. You’re supposed to be reading the paper, making tea, having casual sex in the back seat, watching baseball, whatever.

Tesla have said that the car, at the time, had only one camera, the new ones have 8. Not much of a relief to the geezer in Ohio who died. They’ve buried seven new cameras with him.

But systems crash. Its what they do. As someone who doesn’t trust other drivers, I certainly could never trust other driverlesses. Could you?

Happy Friday

A xxxx