I don’t, how’s that for a short answer?
Mind you, this is coming from a huge science-fiction movie nerd and robot fan, so theoretically, I should love the whole car-drives-itself thing, an SF standard since forever. And I do love the way Will Smith’s Audi stows its wheel in I, Robot, which is where I grabbed the frames for the topshot GIF. (Notably, that GIF is reversed, because while the Fresh Prince does trust his Audi to self-drive while he naps, he does not trust it to do the right thing when he’s about to get piled on by a bunch of Fruitiger Aerobots.)
I’m also a big fan of GM’s 1956 vision for self-driving technology as seen below, wherein a family of four is seen cruising effortlessly beneath the bubble top of a wheeled Wally Wood spaceship (which you may recognise as GM’s Firebird II concept) in the wondrous future of 1976.
And of course, I love Johnny Cab, because who doesn’t. Jonathan Entertainment Cabriolet is an interesting example, because he kind of gets at why I don’t see myself ever wanting a “full self-driving” car. Adaptive cruise control? Automatic braking? Yes, I’ll have those, but door-to-door from city to highway and back under computer control is a pass for me – even in a world where the machine’s infallibility can be taken for granted in exactly the same way that none of us ever wonders if a calculator did the math right.
You see, I would just be too uncomfortable sitting right there behind the wheel (or the space where it used to be, if I’m in Will’s Audi) as the car drives itself. I may have total confidence in the car’s ability to get me from A to B safely, but I would certainly be judging it. “Why are you changing lanes?” “Why aren’t we in the left lane?” “I wouldn’t turn here.” Etc. My head would be pounding. Just let me drive. (Assuming I can drive – make no mistake, I would appreciate being able to tell the car “take me to the hospital, I’m having a heart attack,” or “take me home, I overdid it on the Mai Tais,” and the safety benefits of that capability cannot be overstated.)
Strangely, I would be unbothered if I were on a bus that was self-driving (again, assuming take-it-for-granted safety of the system). Because who pays attention to the driving of a bus? Just let me know when I’m at my stop. But I can’t tune out like that in a car, where I’m constantly confronted by the fact that no one is driving, like the recurring nightmare I frequently had as a kid (feel free to psychoanalyze me in the comments). Sitting in the passenger seat while the car self-drives would be even worse. Know what would help? Put Johnny Cab in the driver’s seat. Even though he’s hilariously fake and doesn’t even pretend to hold a steering wheel (or have arms), someone is driving. I need that.
You tell us: Do You Actually Want Your Car To Drive Itself?
Topshot GIF: I, Robot/20th Century Fox
In theory? Sure, let me nap.
With technology available in our lifetimes? Hell no, I don’t trust that.
The first frame of the 1956 GM video you posted looks like the people are milliseconds away from screaming in terror.
Ordinarily, I’m a very safety conscious person. And it would be terrifying for a critical control interface to disappear ala the Audi. Did my steering wheel just get repossessed? Did I miss a payment?
I don’t mind something like some radar-guided braking system braking for me if I missed something happening around me.
I once had a rental Nissan Rogue that braked very aggressively out of nowhere. I mean, there was not another vehicle within several hundred feet. And it startled me and then I just yelled at the dashboard and said, “WTF was THAT about?” And fortunately, there wasn’t someone immediately behind me.
My ex-wife managed to back two different highish-end SUVs into things despite all the beepers going off. Maybe, for her, autonomous braking would be helpful.
To me, it was annoying AF trying to back out of our driveway and these shrill alarms going off in those, after I had already seen the traffic conflict, reacted and applied the brakes.
Larger aircraft now have TCAS, which almost certainly has prevented tragic things from happening.
But backing out of a driveway in a residential neighborhood is not something I need to be nannied about.
I want a car that can drive itself. Fall asleep in the car at the border, wake up in the south of France! Yes please.
Commuting isn’t fun, and I’ve ridden in enough autonomous vehicles at this point to see that it can be done well, probably better than the vast majority of human drivers.
Do I want to be able to drive when I feel like it? Absolutely. I like to drive, just not out of obligation or in traffic.
I do, with two caveats:
I still enjoy driving quite a bit of the time, but if I could offload some of the more boring trips to the car I would.
I am also not convinced that the current machine learning-based AV tech is ever going to be good enough for me to trust it. I know too much about how it works and how the people who are pushing it like to gloss over important details.
I do not want my car to drive itself.
There should be 2 choices: drive your car yourself or use public/mass transit.
There are too many variables.
I believe my life would have been immeasurably improved if I had been able to spend my working life riding to work in a dependable bus or train or even walking or riding my bike to work.
My neighborhood was one of the first suburbs in this area and it was connected to the downtown area by a trolley system. Dropping that for required auto transportation was a mistake that should have been corrected long ago.
Absolutely not.
No.
Self-flying helicopter? Sure.
Yes, please, and it can’t happen any sooner. There’s nothing more mind-numbing than my two-hour-total daily commute.
No. I have zero interest in a self driving car. Hell I don’t even use cruise control and I drive 20,000+ miles per year.
Hell no. I would NOT mind a truly reliable self-driving point to point driving service for certain things. Like getting to and from big events with expensive parking like sports events and so forth.
I want to highlight how frontal crash avoidance systems and self driving technology are ruining headlights and oncoming visibility.
Vehicles without radar devices rely on the headlights and cameras to detect obstacles and objects ahead of the vehicle. If the headlights do not illuminate an object, the car cannot react and cannot claim these collision avoidance technologies.
Because of this, paired with the recent trend of headlights being mounted at bizarre and low points on a lot of vehicles, the cutoff line for the beam is no longer below or horizontal to the headlight. Headlights have become so blinding to oncoming traffic now because they are no longer properly aimed for drivers, but for the camera systems of the vehicles.
This is another unfortunate symptom of the addition of self driving features to vehicles.
Funnily enough, several insurance research institutions found that these collision avoidance systems didn’t actually help improve safety, the biggest improvement was headlight technology (perhaps related to the awful cutoff line?) which the US has always been behind.
Yes—and no
If I could have crawled into my work van Monday after being on a roof all day with windchill double-digits below 0°F, curled around a thermos of hot chocolate, and told it to take me home—assuming they have a 1/2 million $ life insurance policy on me—I’d gladly have done so.
I don’t put even 4k miles on my two cars each year, so I’ll keep the helm myself, thankyouverymuch. While I do have fuel injection, airbags, and abs, neither has even traction control, therefore I’ll keep driving them until I can’t operate a clutch.
“Do You Actually Want Your Car To Drive Itself?”
HELL YES!!
I used to think I would hate self driving, but I have a Mach E with BlueCruise now and it makes highway driving so much more enjoyable. I’m not doing my daily driving to get excited, that’s what sports cars are for. Self driving tech reduces fatigue and stress and makes driving so much more enjoyable on your daily trips