Ford sided with the pioneering engineers at Google last week in announcing plans to introduce limited-use vehicles without traditional controls within five years. Some other major automakers — and virtually all of them are well along in their work on self-driving vehicles — say they will introduce automated elements one step at a time, until drivers accept that they no longer need to control their cars.
Miss it? I'll put it in yellow for you.
Ford sided with the pioneering engineers at Google last week in announcing plans to introduce limited-use vehicles without traditional controls within five years. Some other major automakers — and virtually all of them are well along in their work on self-driving vehicles — say they will introduce automated elements one step at a time, until drivers accept that they no longer need to control their cars.
They are correct about this:
“There was a brief period when people would be a little nervous and monitor the car very carefully,” said Google engineer Nathaniel Fairfield, “and then they would start to relax and they would sort of trust the system, and really over-trust the system, and start to get distracted.”
It isn't "self-driving" if you have to monitor it all the time, and at 65 MPH there really isn't any time to switch activities if something goes wrong. At best they can be assured to be "self-driving" in specific geographic areas or types of driving (I'm even skeptical of this, but ok it's more possible). Sure you don't have to push the pedals and turn the steering wheel as much, but really the utility of this is barely worth the bother if you can't crawl in the back seat and take a nap. Either you have to pay attention or you don't. There really isn't a middle ground on that one.