Good luck, Google!

Did you see the pictures of Google’s new driverless car?

According to recent reports, Google—the juggernaut that controls everything we do these days—is about to test a fleet of 100 driverless cars without steering wheels, accelerators or brake pedals. The cars will have a top speed of 40 kilometres per hour, which I guess will allow them to keep pace with all the other vehicles in the express lanes on the 401 around Toronto.

The cars, which hold two passengers, are, apart from their electronic capability, quite low-key in appearance. A Beetle might more closely resemble a Ferrari when stacked up beside a Google. Although looks are probably not supposed to be the point. Safety is the point. And Google expects the cars to be safe because the cars are programmed to drive themselves.

“Our software and sensors do all the work,” said Google project director Chris Umson. “They will take you where you want to go at the push of a button.” So, it will strictly be ‘look ma, no hands (or feet)’ for those willing to employ the vehicle. Mr. Umson maintains that “we want to learn from (the vehicles) and adapt them as quickly as possible.” I just hope Mr. Umson doesn’t want to learn that the cars have a tendency to drift between lanes or to veer off into Tim Horton takeout lines. It will be the braver souls who end up driving the prototype vehicles.

And that seems to me the first obstacle that our friends at Google will have to overcome. There is no manual override, except an emergency ‘off’ button. So out of the starting gate, I’m with auto industry analyst Joe Phillippi, who succinctly observed “I wouldn’t want to hand over my life to a bunch of integrated circuits and software.” While I am hardly a big fan of Detroit automakers these days—what with the massive recalls that have been taking place—I am no greater a fan of a computer industry that seems unable to prevent the crash, the freeze, the hack, the worm and all those other ghastly glitches that make any comparison of the computer to the toaster as a safe and predictable appliance an insult to toasters everywhere.

Let’s say I have programmed my car to take me to Toronto. All of a sudden, I pass a garage sale on the Loyalist Parkway. I need to change destination to program in a stop as I hurtle along at my 40kph maximum vitesse. What am I supposed to do? Pull out a 100-page manual and look for the chapter on stopping for garage sales? Likely it will tell me—if and when I find it—that the command is simple and that all I have to do is press the control/alt/delete/command/ option keys simultaneously, put in my simple 19-character password, and speak to the control system in a clear, slow, unaccented and unexpletivized voice telling it what address to stop at. By that time, of course, I will be cruising past Cobourg.

I can see another hurdle—testosterone. How are you going to persuade the average male of the species to get behind the wheel of something that looks as if it came from a Richard Scarry children’s book? Flashy guys like to drive muscle cars. But even nerdy guys like to drive Lexuses and Mercedes to show the world that they are prepared to spend money on something that they needn’t bother buying. What will they do to signal their status in a basic box over which they have little or no control? I can see a future full of gold leaf paint jobs, racing stripes made from endangered rhino horns, or one-off celebrity artist paint jobs.

Perhaps this obstacle can be overcome by matching it with another one—the potential for boredom. Our pithy friend Mr. Phillippi states “I guess driving across Iowa, it might be fine to sit and let the car drive, and read a book, but…” Boredom—meet status; status—meet boredom. How about a state of the art stereo system inside the vehicle? Or a Netflix option? Or a toenail clipper, perhaps a robotic one that allows you to put your feet up on the dashboard for all the world to see, while it does all the work? Or a whirlpool bath with water jets powered by the motion of the car?

Oh yes, there are loads of problems. And yet there are loads of opportunities. Perhaps we should make the test drivers the personal injury lawyers who can dream of adding computer programmers and Google itself to the list of all those people they can sue in the event of an accident. You sure as heck couldn’t sue the drivers—after all, they wouldn’t be driving. For lawyers, what could be better? Good luck, Google!

dsimmonds@wellingtontimes.ca