July 15: Self drive - an opinion

This is the Tesla that recently crashed, while in the self-drive mode and while its confident owner watched a Harry Potter movie on his ipad. Look, I just write what I read and the fellow who took this pic was first on the scene. He saw that the movie was still playing. What a way to die. The last thing you see before leaving this earth is Harry Potter.

Self drive! Now, here is a car idea, whose time should never have come. Is driving such an onerous task that, the car driving public has just been waiting for the engineers to come up with a way to get them out of the driver's seat? Sure, there are a couple of friends of mine, who should never be behind the wheel of anything, but there will always be folks like that.

Ah, the future as seen thru the eyes of the innocent(?) 1950's........

......cruising along under a super heated glass bubble, playing some board game, while slowly frying under the Summer sun. And of course, dad is wearing a tie, since no one drove a car without one. But the magazines of that time had all sorts of wild ideas about the future. Some actually came to pass and unfortunately self drive is one of them.

What about road rage and that skill you've been working on? You know, your ability to handle road rage in a smart and efficient manner. A way that will dissuade those other idiots from crossing you. Will that have all gone for naught? Another casualty of those stupid self driving cars.

Recently there have been a few bad accidents due to this function. Not a big deal, since all new technology will have some glitches and failures. But assuming you hate driving, if you are smart enough to have made the coin to buy a Tesla, you should be smart enough to pay some attention to technology that, has yet to be perfected. You can't completely tune out, while your car makes its own wrong decisions.

I saw the writing on the wall, when a few years back, some companies introduced a self park feature on their cars (Ford, I'm looking at you). In my opinion, if one couldn't parallel park, well, just maybe they shouldn't be behind the wheel. A bit unfair? Maybe. But many of us like or love to drive, so do we really need all those cars around us driving themselves, while their owners catch up on the latest in teen, or any other age group's, fashions.......

And if Google has their way, we'll all be driving some blob like car, which has all the personality of a blob like car........

.....and maybe these cars, don't need us along for the ride anyway ("So, where have you been today, little blob like car?"). If I thought my car future was going to look like this, well, just shoot me now.

So, what could be worse than a self driving car?

You got it, a self driving truck, such as the one Mercedes is testing. Just what we need, a multi-ton, eighteen wheeler cruising down the highway, waiting for some software malfunction to send it into oncoming traffic, before the otherwise occupied driver (watching Harry Potter?) can correct its course. Makes one shudder to think about it.

So, now you know how I feel about one piece of the new technology. Maybe the engineers can forget about the self driving car and simply prefect a friendly robot, who with its eyes on the road, can chauffeur its owner around the countryside. Maybe this would be a better idea. Maybe it makes about as much sense.

And one more rather important point........not one manufacturer refers to this technology as self drive, which would open them up to all sorts of ugly and expensive litigation. No, it is referred to as driver assistance, which is exactly what it is. So drive while watching Harry Potter at your peril. And, for Pete's sake, smarten up!

Until next time......