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| Self-Driving Cars |
Believe me, I think it is stupid (excuse my language) to drive a car you need to take control over only when it is about to crash. I mean, you may be reading a book, watching a YouTube video in your phone or may have even dozed off, lulled into a dangerous complacency by the fact that your semi-automated car will work just fine in most road situations. Then suddenly your car’s electric horn rings telling you to take over the steering wheel right now. If my vote counts for something, I would say that’s not a good way to avoid crashing your car.
In May 2016, the driver
of a Tesla using Autopilot died in a car crashed in Florida. His car collided
with a lorry turning across the road in front of him.1 Generally
speaking, Autopilot users are expected to keep their hands on the wheel and
their eyes on the road. Nevertheless, Tesla’s Autopilot definitely failed this
driver since for some reason its cameras and radar did not spot the lorry, or
perhaps, they saw the lorry but thought it was something else, for instance, an
overhead sign. In any case, the point I’m trying to make here is that
self-driving cars are like moving computers, and like all computers, they can
sometimes experience some type of unexpected glitch that can cause them to
malfunction or stop altogether. So you can imagine what will happen if this
malfunction happens when the car is traveling at high speed on a highway.
Whiff
of danger
Believe me, I think it is
stupid (excuse my language) to drive a car you need to take control over only
when it is about to crash. I mean, you may be reading a book, watching a YouTube
video in your phone or may have even dozed off, lulled into a dangerous
complacency by the fact that your semi-automated car will work just fine in
most road situations. Then suddenly your car’s electric horn rings telling you
to take over the steering wheel right now.
Naturally, since you haven’t been paying attention it will take at least a few
vital seconds for you to come to your senses and figure out why your car’s
computer panicked and alerted you to take control of the wheel immediately. And
by that time a lot of things would have happened. You will be one of the
luckiest people if you didn’t hit anything or someone before you take full
control.
Despite these dangers, it
is amazing that the move toward full self-driving capability is the future
which a lot of automakers are aiming for. Take Audi – the German automaker
owned by Volkswagen Group. The company had continued to add features that allow
for mostly hands-free driving on places limited to access highways.2
According to Rupert Stadler, Audi AG CEO:
"We see the potential for highly
automated driving also in the city, where traffic is highly complex; this is
the ultimate test for us…In the next decade, we will also have robot taxis.
They will close the gap in urban public transport. We will first experience
cars without a steering wheel and pedals on predefined short journeys."3
How about Ford? Don’t
ask. The company is teaming up with Argo (an artificial intelligence company)
and Google to manufacture fully autonomous vehicles.4 The plan is to
make vehicles that operate within specified areas, including ride-hailing
services in cities. But their long-term goal is to eventually make vehicles
that will safely roam free on America’s roads and streets.5 Other
auto-makers, as well as many tech companies in Silicon Valley, are also rushing
to get autonomous vehicles on the road.
What’s
the point?
So, why am I writing
this? Because I am convinced that self-driving cars will be a big safety
problem. Just consider this: imagine you are driving to a party with your
beautiful boyfriend or girlfriend. Or wife, whatever. As you are getting close
to an intersection, the traffic light changed to red. Not a problem. But then a
large truck carrying fuel suddenly ignites in front of you. If you don’t act
fast before the truck explodes, which it can do any moment, you may suffer
severe burns. You wanted to reverse your car but can’t do that either because
there is a long line of traffic behind you. On the side of the road is an open
field and naturally, you would want to quickly drive your car into the field
hoping to get as far away as possible from the burning truck. You immediately
turned your car towards the field and pushed your accelerator down to the
floor. The car jumped into the field and you are safe at last. Now imagine a
similar situation, except for one difference: this time you and your girlfriend
or boyfriend are sitting in a driverless car. The way the car was built, it can
only obey traffic rules. Not only that, it is programmed to drive only on the
road. This means that it cannot go into the field even if you want it to do so.
It also cannot go backward.6 It must follow the traffic rules even
though in your situation following these rules crucify you. So, what will you do? Your guess is as good as mine.
It is like having a ‘baptism by fire’.
Let’s consider another
problem that driverless cars may have: hacking. The unhappy truth is that the
problem of hacking also applies to modern cars as well. So you could be at risk
of getting hacked if you drive around in a car that is fully loaded with as
many gizmos as an intergalactic spaceship. I sometimes remember the good old
days when cars were just an engine with a driver. Well, those days are gone.
Sorry about that. The cars we have today are basically computers on wheels.
Again, one problem of such modern cars is that they can be hacked. As Andy
Greenberg, a journalist, puts it in his 2016 article in Wired magazine:
“Almost exactly a year ago, Chrysler
announced a recall for 1.4 million vehicles after a pair of hackers demonstrated to WIRED that they could remotely hijack a Jeep’s
digital systems over the Internet. For Chrysler, the fix was embarrassing and
costly. But now those two researchers have returned with work that asks Chrysler
and the automotive industry to imagine an alternate reality, one where instead
of reporting their research to the automaker so it could be fixed, they had
kept working on it in secret—the way malicious hackers would have. In doing so,
they’ve developed a new hack that offers a sobering lesson: It could have
been—and still could be—much worse.”7
The bad news about car
hacking has continued to get worse. In 2015, a Jeep Cherokee in St. Louis
(Missouri, United States) was wirelessly hacked from Pittsburgh. Because of
similar vulnerabilities, Nissan shut down its Leaf App. In just one month in
2016, a pair of hackers in Houston, Texas, stole more than 30 Jeeps.8
The scary story is endless. So you can begin to imagine what a hacker or a
cyber-terrorist could do to a driverless car. It is very scary! Now don’t
listen to those ‘computer wizards’ who claim that modern computer systems are
as secure as a bank. Remember:
they said that about the Ashley Madison
website – a dating website for married people or people in a committed
relationship. We all know what happened to the users of that website.9
Another important area to
look at is employment: as more and more self-driving cars appear on the roads,
many jobs could be lost. In other words, as self-driving cars or driverless
cars becomes more popular, many people who make an honest living by driving things
around will lose their jobs. Some of the jobs that will be affected in that
regard include taxi, bus and truck drivers’ jobs, waste disposal and home delivery
drivers.10 Thus while
self-driving cars might make public transportation cheaper, it could also
result to more people being pushed into the far corners of poverty. It should
also be noted here that if people just bought self-driving cars instead of
using the bus, there may not be a public transport system at all. We all know
what the result will be: people will become less sociable in the future since
they will be secluded in the miserable cars that ferry them around like kids.
Well, how about the loss
of the enjoyment that one derives from driving a car? Forget about it. I don’t
know about you guys but I do get a sense of freedom and liberation each time I
drive my car. I am very sure that I will not get that with a self-driving car.
People like me love cars a lot, for two main reasons. First, because they can
take me to my destination quicker and conveniently. Second, they make me feel
good about myself when driving them. Of
course, everyone may not be like me. One thing I do know is that a lot of
people will agree with me if I say that there’s fun in driving along a scenic
route as the sun sets in the sky. You see things as you get to and pass them,
you drive to different places that you love, more importantly, you are doing it
at will. On the contrary, you wouldn’t find that drive along the scenic route,
or by the lake in your neighborhood to be that exciting if your car just did it
on its own, taking routes you don’t like, making stops you have no interest in,
and so on.
Stay scared
Well, what do you say? I will help you here: when more and more
things in our lives get automated, I mean things as simple as the automobiles,
we will soon begin to use less of our brains. This will eventually degrade our
ability to think and act for ourselves. It is worth bearing in mind that our
brains is what distinguishes us from the rest of the living things on earth. So
I think we should be concerned about what will happen when our brains become
less active. In my opinion, if we allow our brains to go idle then we will
quintessentially become more of an animal or regress back to the Stone Age.
Human beings have indeed
come a long way since the invention of cars. We have explored previously
unknown regions of the earth and we have landed on the moon. We have also had
two world wars, and so on. All these times, the basics of the car has never
changed one bit. Of course, cars are now safer, faster and more efficient,
which is good. All this time, the key aspect of the car is still the same: a
car and its driver. It is good to remember that we had horses and riders even
before the cars and this natural order had been like this for years because
there is nothing wrong with it. As dumb as I am, I find it really hard to trust
an artificially created mix of wires and electricity called self-driving cars
with my life.
References
1Driverless Cars: Eyes on
the Road. (2016, December 24). The Economist, pp. 111-112.
2Korosec, K. (2017, March
15). Why Audi Created a New Business Devoted to Self-Driving Tech. Fortune,
Retrieved April 29, 2017 from
http://fortune.com/2017/03/15/audi-self-driving-car-business/
3Ibid, para. 4
4Ford (2017). News. Retrieved April 30, 2017 from https://media.ford.com/content/fordmedia/fna/us/en/news/2017/02/10/ford-invests-in-argo-ai-new-artificial-intelligence-company.html
5Bailey, R. (2016, August 26). Self-Driving Cars: Half-Assed
Automation Is Stupid and Dangerous. Reason Foundation. Retrieved April
29, 2017 from
http://reason.com/blog/2016/08/26/self-driving-cars-half-assed-automation
6Car Throttle (n.d.). Why Driverless Cars Should Be Banned.
Retrieved April 30, 2017 from https://www.carthrottle.com/post/we3yp99/
7Greenberg,
A. (2016, August 1). The Jeep Hackers Are Back to Prove Car Hacking Can Get
Much Worse. Wired, pp. Retrieved April 30, 2017 from https://www.wired.com/2016/08/jeep-hackers-return-high-speed-steering-acceleration-hacks/
8Auto Blog(2016). Hackers
Arrested After Stealing More Than 30 Jeeps in Texas. Retrieved April 30,
2017 from http://www.autoblog.com/2016/08/04/hackers-steal-30-jeeps-houston-texas/
9Hosie, R. (2017, January 16). Ashley Madison Hacking: What
Happened When Married Man Was Exposed. Independent. Retrieved April 30,
2017 from http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/love-sex/ashley-madison-hacking-accounts-married-man-exposes-cheating-website-infidelity-rick-thomas-a7529356.html
10Car Throttle, op. cit., para
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