Just finished an old article from 2014 with the authors thoughts on driverless cars. It was quite insightful especially since it was written so “long ago” in tech years. It seems that each year technology jumps in directions that we would never have imagined just 10 years ago. When the iPhone was just a dream of Steve Jobs. Cellular phones have become pocket computers, watches are what were only dreamed about in Dick Tracey comics, a pair of ugly glasses that record the world and give you any answer you desire, and now, cars that can drive themselves.
Self driving vehicles have been around for some time. Just take a ride in the Disneyland monorail that was built in 1955, that amazed guests with a peek in the future. This vehicle has been driverless for over 50 years. In the 80’s Disney built a tram for an airport using an induction system. For those not familiar with this technology, it is a cabin on a track with reversible magnets in between the rails. As the car moves toward the track embedded magnet, the polarity pulls the object, and as the car moves past the magnet with the force of momentum, the magnet reverses polarity and pushes the car forward. This all controlled with a mainframe computer that sequences the polarity of all of the magnets all the way down the track. In those days, mainframe computers were “wall size” and tape driven. No hard drives, no CPU’s just binary instructions. Quite a feat in those days.
Disney always had an eye in the future with all of its endeavors. I can speak from experience because I was one of the lucky employees of the Disney R&R department called “WED” and “MAPO” which stand for Walter E Disney and Mary Poppins respectively in Glendale CA. I worked in an area of the building called “pelican alley”, because its the area that built the first animatronic feature ride called the “Tiki Room” for Disneyland. (Pelicans … get it?) During my 4 year stay (laid off after Tokyo Disneyland was finished) I was fortunate to be able to design and build a number of animatronic characters in EPCOT in Orlando Florida. One of these characters was to be installed in the attraction “Spaceship Earth” and was a barber patron that had robotic arms combing and cutting the patrons hair and shining his shoes. This photo was taken by one of the Disney photographers with me on the right, and a fellow employee that photo bombed me on the left. He had nothing to do with this creation of mine, other than to spot a photographer and wanted to be in the picture. But I’m not resentful! LOL
The animatronic figure is about half way complete in this photo. I had no blueprints to work from, just an active imagination, and a desire to make something that would delight people for generations. Well, recently Disney decided to take out Spaceship Earth from EPCOT, and as such, my creation has probably gone to the scrap heap. Even futuristic ideas have a lifespan.
But I digress and need to come back from memory lane, and jump into the driverless car lane. How would this technology benefit us? What would be it’s disadvantages? I feel ideally, an infrastructure could be built similar to the induction system trams that Disney built 25 years ago. With the magnet induction system, sensors could be built into the roadways to move and guide the vehicle while analyzing traffic for the most efficient movement of the car. Sensors would also be able to detect pedestrian traffic, and direct the people with displays or remotely controlled barriers. All of the system would be computerized and work cohesively with other cities infrastructures when traveling state to state.
Instead, big corporations like Google and major car companies are planning to have cars drive themselves. I have to say that if these cars are successful, then maybe municipalities will have the courage to start building infrastructures to take the technology further. But until then, I fear there would be some disadvantages. One would be all of the delivery drivers (large trucks, parcel delivery), taxi, Uber and Lyft drivers would be out of work! GM is already looking into the future by partnering with Lyft to give another option of transportation that takes car ownership out of the picture. They are proposing to provide rental vehicles that you can summon and pay for with your smartphone. That would put car salesmen out of work, not to mention parking attendants (since cars drive themselves) and mechanics (since they would be all electric cars if legislators have their way). Essentially the vehicles would all be robots with sensors that move about as programmed.
Presently hackers have demonstrated that current model wifi connected cars can be controlled by someone with a laptop and desire to create havoc, controlling the brakes and accelerator and scaring the life out of the car driver. Now what could go wrong with driverless cars that most assuredly will be wirelessly connected, and the “driver” of the driverless car isn’t paying attention, could be flying off the side of a cliff, into oncoming traffic or worse! Since all of the driverless cars will be loaded with sensors, what would stop pedestrians from forming “flash mobs” standing in front of these vehicles whose programming would prevent them from moving forward, backing up traffic for miles. Since most will have lost their blue collar jobs as a result of this technology, and probably bored, broke and angry, this scenario doesn’t seem so far fetched.
Naturally the thought of sitting in your car and enjoying any preferred entertainment without having to worry about driving sounds very enticing. I ask that everyone take a breath and a step back, and think about the bigger picture while asking a very important question … What benefits can this technology bring without causing harm to others?