When new technology arrives in the marketplace, a lot of us are reluctant to embrace it and dismiss it very easily. I remember in the late 90's when GPS first arrived to the civilian market and now has become a staple in almost every vehicle on the road. However, there are still some old timers that don't believe they work. I followed an older guy to an auto auction a few years ago who tried to use a GPS to get there. He pulled over and told me he was lost and added that the blankety-blank GPS didn't work. I laughed to myself, took over the navigational duties and proceeded straight to the destination.
Fast forward to now: Driverless cars are already sharing the road with us in California and Nevada as Google continues to test their invention. It's been widely reported that they have safely operated over 300,000 miles without an incident. This statistic pushes the Google car beyond our safest human drivers by locality in national safety studies. Check out the very informative video here. I'm sure there are many people who'll dismiss this project and state that the human being can outperform a driverless car. However, the many admirable traits of a human being that separate us from the machines are also what make us bad drivers. Here are a few examples of things a Google driverless car will not do that gives it an advantage over us:
- no drinking
- no eating
- no texting
- no talking on phone
- no adjusting radio
- no looking at GPS
- NO DISTRACTIONS
This technology is almost ready for the American roads, but it will take a marketing campaign like we've never seen to convince the American people to turn over our birthright (driving) to a computer. I suspect that the U.S. government will invest heavily in it when it first hits the market and set the example for the consumer; modeling it's productivity and safety (hopefully).
As you can imagine, the technology will also work with the heavy truck market with even more benefits than disadvantages. I'll tackle driverless trucks in my next blog. Until then, be safe and don't give Google another reason to replace us.