"Self driving cars are coming"
"Self driving cars might not be coming"
"Self driving cars will solve everything"
"Self driving cars will solve nothing"
Those are pretty much the headlines from articles concerning autonomous driving. It depends on where you look; tech- and science publications seem to have more optimistic attitude towards them, while the more conservative and reserved automotive media has its concerns.
But that's obvious. What does a self-proclaimed "car guy" think about this?
Well, to me its more of a humorous approach to the whole idea. First of all, the word "autonomous" to me referrers to something that is capable of its own decisions, without any external input. The external input - in this case, human - will define the rules and boundaries, sure, but to me autonomous is something that is capable of performing the task it was programmed to perform - within the preset boundaries - without the need of any external inputs what so ever. All of this, while attaining a sense of moral in its choices.
And to be perfectly frank, it's not just me who thinks the wording is a bit off here - it's the dictionary as well. This is why I find it hilarious, that safety systems fitted to cars today are called "level 2 autonomous" or "3rd degree autonomous", while in reality they're just reprogrammed systems that we used to call lane-keep assist or radar cruise control. And anyone who has read too many sci-fi articles or Elon Musk tweets; I wholeheartedly welcome you to visit Finland during winter time to test out your "level this and that autonomous driving system", and tell me that it's capable of driving itself.
But let's put these trivial little things aside, and focus on a far bigger problem.
I totally get what we're trying to achieve here as a human race (North America especially). There is the cold and capitalist side of it, although it's not talked about openly. What is talked about openly is the safety aspect of the thing. Partly because on the surface at least, they might be on to something, partly because that's a really neat excuse to lay-off people in the future. Well... That might be a bit of a Scandi-socialist stretch, but still... The flag of safety is waving high and mighty in the pole of autonomy, raised by the hands of economics.
But as I said, there is something to be done about the safety on the roads.
It's a fact that people are too busy updating their employment title on LinkedIn, or TikToking their #broomchallenges to actually do any driving. And in the epicenter of the whole "autonomous driving" movement, California, I don't even blame them that much. If the parking lot stretches from the side of your house to your workplace 20 miles away, and your average mph is on the single digits, wouldn't you pick up your phone from the pocket? At the first glance, introducing a bit of automation to the game would actually improve that, right?
Ok, let's leave it at three 'whys'. Now introduce a autonomous vehicle into the equation. A car that can go and get your Amazon package or groceries for you. All of a sudden the average number of people in one car sitting in a traffic jam is actually going sub-1.
Imagine sitting in a traffic jam. On your right is car with no one in it, going to UPS parcel center to pick up a package. On your left is a car that is set on "cruise" because the owner couldn't find a decent parking spot downtown, and the one he found costs more than the car cruising around (or sitting still in a traffic jam) on its own for couple of hours. The single driver (or passenger?) of the car in front has had enough so she steps out, sets up the car to find available parking on its own and decides to walk the rest of the way. She was close to work anyway...
Now go back to the root-cause analysis part.
The solution does not exactly fit the problem, does it?
-Joona
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