My dear friend Richard is a driver’s driver. On top of restoring antique cars and belonging to several car clubs, he is constantly taking driving courses and going to road rallies. No, he does not race in the NASCAR circuit, but he is pretty darn good.
He came out with this statement about two years ago: “Most drivers can’t drive.” At the time I had to sit back and scratch my 
head. Then I did something most of us are afraid to do; I observed myself, and I observed other drivers.
Most of my fellow drivers drive too fast for the conditions, they don’t merge correctly, they don’t yield properly, they don’t know how to turn, they don’t signal properly, they don’t notice pedestrians, they tail-gate, they run red lights, they don’t stop properly and on and on. Since my conversation with Richard, I am still very far from perfect but I have tried to drive better.
If you ask another driver about his or her driving behaviors, they will tell you they are great drivers. For the most part, I think most of us are all lucky drivers. There’s a huge difference. Again, please notice I have said, “We.”
In a September 1, 2015 New York Times article entitled: “Google’s Driverless Cars Run Into Problem: Cars With Drivers,” the writers apparently agree with my friend.
“Last month, as one of Google’s self-driving cars approached a crosswalk, it did what it was supposed to do when it slowed to allow a pedestrian to cross, prompting its ‘safety driver’ to apply the brakes. The pedestrian was fine, but not so much Google’s car, which was hit from behind by a human-driven sedan… Researchers in the fledgling field of autonomous vehicles say that one of the biggest challenges facing automated cars is blending them into a world in which humans don’t behave by the book.”
Though the article agrees that:
“Traffic wrecks and deaths could well plummet in a world without any drivers, as some researchers predict. But wide use of self-driving cars is still many years away, and testers are still sorting out hypothetical risks…”
Maybe the funniest statement of all in regard to driverless cars versus human drivers was made by Dmitri Dolgov, head of software for Google’s Self-Driving Car Project.
“He said that one thing he had learned from the project was that human drivers needed to be ‘less idiotic.’”
The article explains that humans are becoming more and more distracted (cell phones, texting, etc.) and they are more impatient. Many have problems with their fellow drivers who are just obeying the speed limits.
Coexistence with machines
The fatalities as the result of motor vehicles as a percentage of the population has dropped in dramatic fashion. It does not mean the fatalities and injuries have disappeared. About 33,000 people die each year as the result of motor vehicle accidents. Self-driving cars could virtually eliminate those deaths and millions of injuries. Most of the fatalities and injuries are due to driver error. If if we look at all of the excuses and the technologies such as back-up cameras and the rationalizations that our luxury machines are sacred, we are still losing tens of thousands of people each year due to driver error.
When most of us think about “our technology,” we think in terms of our smartphones and computers. We are more than happy to let our devices tell us (or others) where we are and where we are going. We are not so quick to take our hands off the wheel and let technology take us there.
Ethically, if we could save 20,000 or even 30,000 lives per year by accelerating the development of driverless cars, should we do so? Would you buy one? Will we have a few roads in each city where we can still drive our own cars, or have a separate, special lane on our parkways where the other lanes will be reserved for driverless cars? Maybe it is time.
For myself, I would be more than happy to allow driverless cars to take me on long road trips, or take me far away from some of the drivers I have recently seen on my local roads.
YOUR COMMENTS ARE WELCOME!
