Published January 13, 2008 in the Hibbing Daily Tribune

Baby, you can boot up my car

By Aaron J. Brown

Nothing gets people thinking about the past or future better than a bland, even foreboding present. Possible economic recession? Yuck. Uncertainty in the presidential election? Nothing but ulcers for political junkies like me. And since the past involves “quantified research,” it’s so much easier to just envision the future.

That’s what folks did last week at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Maybe you saw some of the coverage on the news. I saw one reporter asking about a robot ice bucket that delivered beer using technology very similar to the “Roomba” vacuum cleaner. Anyway, the future includes much more than “smart beer.” The item that caught my eye was the Chief Executive of GM, Rick Wagoner, telling the convention audience that we are only 10 years away from a driverless car, if there proves to be demand. I got this from an AP report by Tom Krisher.

So here is Wagoner’s vision (and with a name like Wagoner he must have been destined to lead a company that once made the Cutlass Cruiser station wagon available in faux wood panel exterior). You could get in your car, punch in a destination (eg: home, work, down by the docks where Guido stashed “the package”), and ZOOM, the car would take you there, even parking for you. Sensors would keep the vehicle on the road and a safe distance from other cars, obstacles and, theoretically, deer. The robot driver would communicate with other vehicles and with traffic stations along the way, allowing it to reroute or reduce speed in the event of trouble. You, on the other hand, just sit in a comfortable seat, listen to tunes, call people on your cell, type on your laptop, or maybe just sleep – all the things most drivers now do anyway without the risk.

My first thought about the driverless car is this. You know how sometimes your car stops working, so you take it to a mechanic who tells you that you need a new “chip” because the “chip” randomly malfunctioned. And it costs $500. Yeah. What happens when a “chip malfunction” causes your robot driver to send you careening off an overpass into a fireball of death? I’m sure they’d take great care to avoid that ever happening, but that’s what they say when they sell people the cars with bad chips. I can deal with the car not starting. I can’t deal with my robot driver trying to kill me.

To be fair, according to the wire report I read, a Stanford University professor dampened the driverless car vision by saying that the car is technically possible, but would require years of regulation to become a working reality. Also at issue are the millions of cars now on the road that do not have robot drivers. I know a lot of people –  A LOT – who would not trust the person trying to sell them a robot driver retrofit on their 1992 Buick Century.

This all reminded me of one of the conversations I had with one of my relatives around Christmas time about flying cars (yes, we talk about these things). My position was one of cautious support for flying cars, countered by his enthusiastic support. I asked, “What keeps them from crashing into each other out in the sky?” He cited a Popular Mechanic story that suggested that every compass direction would be assigned an altitude to keep the northbounders from barreling into the westbounders.

I was temporarily convinced, until I wondered “What happens in the Wal-Mart parking lot?” I predict similar concerns with the driverless car. Hmm. Well, we should keep on dreaming. That’s what makes America great.

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