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Adam Thierer

Against “Autonomous Driving”

Yesterday at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, General Motors chief executive Rick Wagoner delivered an address on the future of automobiles and technology and hyped the concept of “autonomous driving.” “Autonomous driving means that someday you could do your e-mail, eat breakfast, do your makeup, and watch a video while commuting to work,” Wagoner said. “In other words, you could do all the things you do now while commuting to work but do them safely.”
Jetsons
Now don’t get me wrong, I’m no Luddite. Matter of fact, I’m obsessed with technology and A/V gadgets, and I have covered tech policy issues for a living a 3 different think tanks over the past 16 years. I love all things tech. But I love driving more. A lot more. I have been fanatical about my sports cars ever since I was a kid. From my first car–a 1979 “Smokey & the Bandit” Pontiac TransAm–to my 86 Mustang GT, to my 90 Nissan 300ZX Twin Turbo, my BMWs (two M3s and an 850i) all the way to my current 2005 Lotus Elise–I have been completely obsessed with cars and the joys of motoring throughout my life. And the idea that we’ll all one day soon be driving to work in the equivalent of personal subway cars makes me a little sad because it means the joy of driving might me lost in coming generations.

I wonder if my son will grow up with the same passion for motoring that I have, and that my dad had before me. (I’m certainly going to have something to say about it!) And I wonder if, a generation from now, “driver’s education” classes will consist of little more than downloading a user name and password for your computer-car.

On the upside, I suppose I could see the advantage of making the driving experience fully automated for all those idiots on the road who really do engage in risky behaviors in their cars, like “e-mail, eat[ing] breakfast, do[ing] your makeup, and watch[ing] a video while commuting to work,” as Wagoner suggests. I hate those SOBs. They give me nightmares because, at a minimum, I fear what they might do to my car when they are not looking at the road. Worse yet, I think of the danger they pose to pedestrians (like my kids). So, perhaps a Jetsons-mobile for these morons will be an effective way to reduce accidents and traffic fatalities.
Lotus at GW scenic overlook 1
But as for myself, I will pass on “autonomous driving,” thank you very much. I want to be fully in control of my motoring experience forever more. Especially behind the wheel of my beloved Lotus Elise!

January 9, 2008 | Comments |

  • Dale B
    Driving is one of my pleasures and it would be a shame to loose it.


    One thing you forgot to mention is that along with autonomous driving we'll get autonomous crashing. The lawyers will certainly have fun with that.

  • Amen, Brother.
  • Adam,

    A half-century after the debut of the automatic transition, there are still people who drive sticks. I think those people are a little silly, but there doesn't seem to be any prospect of that option going away any time soon.

    The first autonomous cars will need to have the ability to interact with human drivers anyway, so I suspect that if autonomous driving ever does become feasible, humans and computers will share the road for the foreseeable future. Most likely, cars will be able to switch between "automatic" and "manual" driving with the push of a button. Most people will let their cars drive for them most of the time, but will occasionally take the reins themselves for the fun of it.

    Keep in mind that there are enormous upsides here. Tens of thousands of lives are lost every year to automobile accidents, many due to drivers who are too tired, intoxicated, or distracted to drive safely. Once autonomous driving matures, it's likely it would dramatically cut down on those deaths.
  • One other point: there won't be automatic-only cars for a long, long time. The engineers will design the first few generations of autonomous cars to turn over control to a human operator at the first sign of malfunction. It will still be necessary to know how to drive a car so you can take over if your autonomous driving software malfunctions. So your son (and probably your grandchildren) will still have to sit through boring drivers' ed classes about driving rules. Hopefully, none of them will be injured in an accident due to their youthful reckless driving.
  • Of course those people who grew up letting the car drive itself would probably crash it as soon as it turned control over to them. :-)
  • Cars kill around 43,000 people a year-- often the youngest drivers. That's a horrible toll. Imagine the outrage if some new transportation technology killed that many people every year. The current system sucks and with CAFE standards rising, it may get deadlier to drive. I'm with Tim on the upside of robo-cars. It's huge, and I'd rather be watching DVDs or surfing the web when I'm stuck in traffic.
  • Henry Miller
    In less than 30 years it will be illegal for a human to be in control of a car on public roads. (there will still be private tracks, and there will be an exception for malfunctions - but it only applies for long enough to get to the side of the road) Once autonomous cars have been out for 5 years, statistics will make is obvious that humans crash far more often than the computers. At that point the law will require all cars to be autonomous, and 15 years latter (when the last of the manual cars are off the road) you won't be able to drive your own car. That gives 10 years for the autonomous driving car technology to be perfected.

    Of course lawyers will get involved when there are crashes, but in most cases the autonomous car will have saved enough evidence to prove that it wasn't at fault.
  • Those "autonomous" cars will result in a net loss of individual autonomy. How much will all those high-tech bells and whistles add to the price of a car? How much will the constant breakdown of all the unnecessary extra components add to the cost of owning it? How much will all of it add to the average consumer debt load? And how many extra hours will the average person have to work a month to pay it?

    I never buy anything without thinking of how many hours of slavery I'm selling myself into to pay for it. Give me something that's simple, reliable, and user-friendly, designed for cheap repair, with low mainteance costs, that I can pay off as quickly as possible and then use as long as possible without depending on THE MAN for outside income to keep it running. I want something designed to perform its basic function as well as possible--period.

    I work with several people who 1) buy the biggest house they can possibly make monthly payments on, with almost nothing down and a forty year mortgage; 2) spend $30,000 or more on a fancy new sportscar, and 3) then spend time surfing the web shopping for expensive electronics to spend their "discretionary income" on. Perhaps not coincidentally, they work sixty hour weeks (or more) and are utterly dependent on continued employment to avoid living in the gutter in a week. That means holding on to their job like grim death, meekly suffering any indignity from the boss, obeying his every whim, and living in dread of earning his displeasure.

    My habit is to buy a used pickup in good condition for $2000 or so, drive it until it wears out (my current ride has lasted 5 years and is still fine), and replace it with another one at a similar price. I'll gladly forego playing around with the cellphone and blackberry (why would I even want to own an electronic leash, anyway?) while I'm driving, in return for being able to tell my boss to go to hell.
  • It's been a year since this news brought up and I also hate the concept of autonomous driving. I think GM already abandoned this concept for real...
  • Fox2
    Yeah, I dont really like this idea either. I like driving too, really the biggest upside I can think of for "Autonomous Driving" is accident prevention, other than that I still think I like driving myself better. If anything, I'd rather have a choice to drive it manually, or set to "Autonomous".

    I mean, doesent this sorta take away from some of the fun parts of driving? What about you driving, but autonomous collision avoidance or something? Just an idea.
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