Know what Homer Simpson would say about something like this? He’d probably make a reference to donuts and drink a beer, actually but that is beside the point. There hasn’t been much news to trigger our Friday gag reflex lately, but this gem from General Motors certainly did. Recently the General announced that by 2020 they’d be offering a car that can virtually drive itself. This isn’t an active cruise control deal but a fully driving car that can accelerate, stop, and steer itself and probably do it better than the latte sucking douche canoe on his cell phone in the other lane from you right now…hey, stop reading and driving! Anyway, the company is delighted by the breakthrough of adding the steering function to the car, basically filling out the puzzle on how to really make a self driving car that the Terminator robots which will soon rule our planet can roll around in with ease. For the vast majority of people who seems to view cars akin to a toaster, this is wonderful news. Now they can completely divorce themselves from the world around them and play dumb games on their phone, send mean Tweets to the Kardashian family, or involve themselves in bizarre things on chat roulette. Ok, that’s what we’ll be doing but other people may do it too, particularly the tweeting thing.
GM Engineers recently showed the car off for reporters where it did not kill anyone or try to take control of itself and escape to Mexico. In fact, all accounts are that the car worked very well. We’re pretty sure that our invite was lost in the mail or perhaps we failed on a security clearance situation, or they knew we’d try to blow the thing up if given the chance. Nothing good can come of this long term. It certainly seems to cement the idea that at some point down the figurative road we’ll all just be whizzing along in pods we have virtually no control over. Currently those are known as Toyota Camrys.
DO NOT WORRY. GM is already working on making sure this system is safe. Don’t believe us? Just read this passage from a USA Today story:
With the system, people will be able to take their hands off the wheel on a freeway and let the car do the work, he said.
GM is aware that the system could make drivers complacent, turning over control to the car even though the system isn’t designed for that, said Charles Green, an engineer who studies driver performance with the systems.
So before it gets to market, GM will have a feature that makes sure drivers are paying attention, he said.
“Super Cruise will be designed in a way to help you keep your visual attention on the road ahead,” Green said, declining to specify how the system will do that. “The ‘how’ is something that will become more apparent as we show Super Cruise in its later versions.”
Sure, there’s no plan on how to keep people from nodding off, smoking joints, and/or knitting behind the world but they’re working on it. People currently fall asleep in astonishing numbers while behind the wheel of cars they are actually driving. Imagine the frequency of that happening when you are “behind the wheel” of a moving pod that you’ve turned your life and the lives of your family over to. Belt down a little Scotch, put on some nice music, lay down on a bearskin rug lean your seat back and wake up in Hackensack….just that easy! Unless everyone dies in an inferno-like crash six seconds after you start counting sheep. But hey, fear not, they guys in engineering are on it! Nissan is also on track for a self driving car in 2020 but the good news it that they’ll probably sell 15 of them. The GM one is the creepiest to us because those suckers will move in volume…unless they put the system on a Volt.
Lastly, Honda announced that they are working on a system to have a car alert a driver and pedestrian who is carrying a smart phone if a collision between the two is imminent. This is real, we’re not making it up. We’re just wondering if the text the Honda sends the person about to be squashed will have some profanity in it to allay the urgency of the situation. FU%^ING MOVE! Would get the point across.
Screw this, we’re going home. We’ve got a riding lawn mower to operate with an Irish tan.
Click here to read more about GM’s robot self driving car….of DOOM!
What’s the point of having a car drive itself if you still have to pay attention to what it’s doing? I want a car to drive itself so I can sleep or stream porn on my phone during my commute, darn it!!
Yeah right . GM’s blowing smoke up our collective @$&es just like Nissan and Google … seeing as how everyone from the NHTSA – to the Legal Beagles – to the Engineers – to the Programer- to the Academics .. to the people involved in Artificial Intelligence – to the Insurance mavens – and to everyone else that KNOW’s WTF the real scoop is are saying ….. minimum ….. 20 years lead time …. at best
Fact is it’ll be a minimum of 20 years … if ever … just to get the infrastructure in place to even so much as come close to making Autonomous Driving viable
Sad really … GM being so desperate for positive Press Coverage that they feel the need to stoop to this level of BS .. the again … GM is pretty sad these days now … aren’t they 😉
Sorry to break it to you GS, but Scott’s dream of a triple X commute is closer than you think. Here in CA they (not sure of the make) have already been successfully testing fully self driving cars in traffic. The scientists/computer geeks/engineers doing the testing put an actual human in the “drivers seat” so as not to freak out the other motorists and peds who are on the road. When in fact, the “driver” is doing nothing more than sitting in the seat and looking out the windows. How long until these car toasters (as Brian would call them) hit the show rooms…not sure of that. But it is only a matter of time, that is for sure.
Thanks GM for fixing a problem no one has with a technology no one wants. On the plus side, motorcycles will always be manual and faster than modern robotic crap cans.