Robot Cars? In My Nevada?
Singularity Hub wrote an article last week about Nevada’s Assembly Bill 511:
A proposed law setting down some guidelines for robot cars in the
state. Actually, most of the bill seems to be directed to plug-in
electric cars, giving them a distinctive decal and access to HOV lanes
along with free parking at some public areas around Nevada. Section 8
covers autonomous cars, and directs the DMV to come up with licensing
and operation guidelines for autonomous cars. Singularity Hub does a
great job breaking the bill down (although it’s only a few pages, as
written, and not too chock full of legalese).Instead of rehashing what Singularity Hub said, I’ll approach the bill from a different direction: Will people actually want these cars?
The benefits are clear. If the car is driving itself, then
there is little reason to worry whether the person in the car is
distracted by conversation, or texting, or drunk. People can read the
paper on the way to work, or watch a movie on a road trip across
country. There are efficiency gains to be had as well. If owners can
upload a list of locations, the car can optimize those locations to save
time and fuel. With a network managing all the autonomous cars, each
individual car can be routed through the most efficient roads, bypassing
accidents. With complete control, computers can drive each car more
quickly, and more safely, than humans can: NASCAR drivers already know
about drafting (driving closely behind another car to take advantage of
the displaced wind resistance) but Grandma Smith certainly doesn’t, and
couldn’t perform the maneuver safely if she did. As cars become less
individualized and more integrated through central hubs they begin to
act more like a swarm, and can operate in tandem because the computer
always knows what the car next to you is currently doing and about to
do. There are safety advantages too. Computers can fly airplanes so aerodynamically unstable
that the plane would fall out of the sky without computer control.
Given that, managing a blowout or oil slick should be no problem for a
computer controlled car.
In short, with a smart network cars should be able to maximize the roads to provide each person a better driving experience.
On the other hand, there won’t be much of a driving experience, will there?
I’m far from a driving junkie: Most times I just want to get
where I’m going. All of my cars had automatic transmissions, including
my newest Mustang. I promised myself that if I ever got a real sports
car I’d get a manual transmission, but I hadn’t really felt the ‘thrill’
of a manual transmission. It just seemed like unnecessary work. Then I
got my first motorcycle, and before too long I started to ‘get it.’
While I still enjoy driving my car, compared to a sportbike, driving a
car is boring. Some of the experience has to do with the environment:
The engine roaring, the wind enveloping you, the agility
and acceleration of sheer horsepower available at a flick of the wrist. A
computer ought to be able to control a motorcycle and the person riding
it ought to have many of those same experiences.
The overall riding experience, however, will be very
different just because the rider is no longer controlling the bike (or
car.) It’s not -just- that a bike is fast and agile and that the engine
roars: It’s that, for a short time, a rider really feels in control of
the machine. The two merge, and the thoughts of the rider through small
wrist movements and balance shifts translate into a crisp, quick turn.
The rider gets a sense of control, and perhaps a little pride, from
mastery over the machine. Computerized cars (or motorcycles) lose that
sense of control because, by definition, autonomous cars will have a
computer in control, and the passenger is literally just along for the
ride.
I can imagine wanting an autonomous car for day to day
driving. There is no excitement (hopefully), and no pride, in managing
stop and go traffic. For about three weeks when I was 16 I took some
pride in navigating stop and go traffic without incident, but since then
driving in the city has mostly been a chore. I certainly don’t need (or
expect) much excitement on the way to school or the office, and so a
car that just gets me there works out nicely. But sometime I want to get
out and ride. Sometimes I want to be the one in control, and hit some
mountain roads for a burst of adrenaline.
Certainly some people will want to continue driving their
cars, and that presents a new level of difficulty for autonomous cars.
All of the integrated swarm analysis above depends on the computer being
able to predict what the vehicles around each other will do: If a human
is driving one of those cars the computer will not be able to predict
that car’s actions. Drafting at 150mph is (perhaps) efficient if
computers are controlling the entire chain, but dangerous if a person
slides into the middle of that chain and loses control of their car.
There are, I think, only two ways of handling the computer-human mix:
Either people will be required to buy autonomous cars, or they will have
to be separated from autonomous cars.
The first proposition seems unlikely. First, plenty of
people (including, but not limited to, criminals) will want to drive
sometimes. They bought their vehicles, and for as long as they run
people want to drive them. While Congress could probably pass a law that
forbids the sale of human controlled vehicles, enterprising folks will
continue to make them (they should be substantially the same except for a
few electronic components.)
The second proposition is more likely, but expensive. At
minimum, a barricade in the middle of every road would need to be built,
along with separate merging ramps. Some way of identifying that each
car on that side of the barricade is autonomous would be needed as well,
though a short transmission from each car should keep the honest people
honest. None of that construction is going to be cheap, although it
might provide a national recovery effort, New Deal style, as tens or
hundreds of thousands of people are hired to modernize the roads in the
US.
Barring either of those propositions, people will need to
accept that accidents will happen at a more frequent rate than if
computers were controlling all of the cars, but still probably a lesser
rate than now when humans are driving (almost) everything.
As with most technology, there seems to be a spectrum of
ideals with the major outliers marking the end points. At one extreme,
people fear and dislike change, and are hesitant to adopt any new
technology; especially one that involves a personalized activity like
driving a vehicle. On the other extreme are the technophiles, eager to
use the next new thing undeterred by early bugs. Because I imagine the
vast majority of people often just want to get to their destination
safely, I suspect that the technophiles will jump on automated cars, the
bugs will get worked out and their safety will be proven over the next
five or ten years, and then the majority will begin to replace their
cars with automated vehicles. Some subset will never get them, including
the elderly (who, generally, are resistant to technology) despite how
useful automated cars would be to people reaching the end of their
safe-driving ability.
Autonomous cars are coming, and I hope the human driving experience remains after they get here.
