Baby, You Can't Drive Your Car

Google always promises to do no evil.  So why is it experimenting with driverless cars?

Google is working on computer software that allows cars to propel themselves on pre-set routes.  The idea is that you punch in where you want to go, the car follows the directions to get you to your destination, and it brakes and stops en route using sensors to locate other cars and pick up traffic signal changes.  An override system would allow the owner to take over the controls if necessary.  Now Google even has a new prototype vehicle, sort of resembling a cross between a Volkswagen Beetle and a Dodge Neon, which it just began testing.  it would be produced by a contracted company and the design does not include a steering wheel or pedals.

Anyone for a walk? :-O

I'm sorry, I don't get the idea of a driverless car.  Because, to a Volkswagen enthusiast like me, the whole appeal of a car is that you get to drive the damn thing!  You control the vehicle!  Speed, cornering, curves and straightaways are the things that  make driving pleasurable, and even city driving can be fun if you're agile enough to weave through traffic.  Where's the fun in riding around in an automated car?  But driverless cars, I assume, would mostly be used for necessary trips around town, not pleasure trips to the country or the like.  Well, we already have technology that allows you to ride around town without having to drive a vehicle.  It's called mass transit.

Maybe you've heard of it! :-O

To me, automated-car technology is a dodge (and a Ford), a way of how to deal with the problem of aging Baby Boomers and infirm people of all generations who can't drive while still trying to maintain a car-dependent suburban living pattern and avoiding the consideration of the need for more communities that allow walking and mass transit, which in turn would allow surface mass transit beyond small locales and major metropolitan areas (*cough cough*, high-speed rail, *cough cough*).  Look, young people are already moving to urban and town centers, and many of them don't want a car.  Me, I'd like to think that I would still have a car if I didn't need one, because I want one - I've had too many wonderful drives in the VWs I've owned  (as well as an entertaining drive across northern Pennsylvania on U.S. 6 in a Toyota I'd had to buy, though the scenery was more interesting than the car itself), and, like others, I've listened to too many Beach Boys songs to be against cars completely.  But if the favored solution to moving more people around is to have people buy or rent cars that drive themselves rather than invest in rebuilding our mass transit network, then that's only going to encourage more dependency on private vehicles and possibly more sprawl, as well as more people going different ways to different destinations.  Only they won't have the satisfaction of getting there without help from a computer.

Holding the compass ain't the way I've got to roam.

(P.S. Full disclosure requires me to state that this blog is published on a Google-owned service, and that the opinions expressed here are strictly - and obviously - my own.)