Self Driving Vehicles To The Rescue!

^{They will save countless lives, and the planet.}

By Keith C. Milne

Fortunately, I am old enough to remember enjoying the heck out of cartoons while growing up that showed a future full of promise, delivered to every household equally via the miracle of modern technology and electronic wizardry of all manner.

“Johnny Quest” and “Gigantor the Space Age Robot” quickly come to mind, but the one that I always thought, or at least wanted to think would someday actually come true, was “The Jetsons.” Cool gadgets and flying saucer cars. A robot maid, and a house in the sky that was all glass with an amazing, 360 degree view of the city! Oh Yeah!

So, fast forward more than 50 years, and here we are in “the new millennium” and our culture clock says it is 2021 now. So, where are the flying saucer cars, or jet packs for that matter? What happened?

Big Oil, that’s what happened! And, where has it gotten us? Living in a noisy, polluted world that culturally continues to live out of balance with the earth and live a lifestyle that is causing great harm to the atmosphere that protects all life, and is completely unsustainable.

Now that the modern automobile has become a rolling luxury caravan with Bluetooth connectivity, GPS, 6-speaker surround sound, a movie system, and all manner of other nooks and crannies of techno-wonder packed into them, we are dangerously distracted.

Even those of us who fully intend on NOT breaking any laws and abiding by all of the rules regarding not texting while driving, or not fiddling with all the lit-up buttons and icons on the dashboard, can accidentally get involved with the tech in these cars simply to figure out how to turn something on or off or to adjust something. All you have to do is go and rent a car and suddenly everything is somewhere else and distracting. And, don’t even get me started about smart phones who turn smart people into stupid people.

I have to drive just a short distance of approximately 12 miles one way to work. I use a combination of streets and the highway/freeway/interstate (depending on which part of the country you’re from). I live in small city, and on a narrow, residential street. What I see everyday without fail are distracted drivers who are driving way too fast while doing other things, while simultaneously polluting and adding to climate change, and lowering the quality of life for everyone by making way too much noise while they do it!

#1: driving too fast!!!! A huge part of what is to blame for this particular issue is that our newer cars are designed so that speeding doesn’t feel like speeding any longer. 50 seems like 35, and 70 seems like 50. A majority of folks around here are driving large SUV’s that use a lot of gas, and put the people driving them up high so they feel like they’re “on top of the world” and they tend to drive accordingly while they zip along to their destinations. After all, they are nice and safe in the cocoon of their high tech automobiles, often very distracted while moving forward at speeds that do not forgive anyone for driving failures, and are not really even that aware at just how fast they are moving, or just how much damage all of that vehicle weight and momentum is capable of should they make even one little mistake.

#2: Too many drivers are doing other things while driving or, in some cases, doing mostly other things, with driving as a secondary activity to putting on makeup, eating, texting, and other assorted oddities.

#3: 99.9% of drivers are driving internal combustion engine vehicles. Yes, this is a problem and always has been for planet Earth. It is unfortunate that we have waited until the final hour in which to begin to do something about the damage we have allowed large manufacturers to inflict on this planet so that they can reap monetary profit, while we can all have the luxury of burning pollutants into the very air that we breathe, so that we can “go for a drive” or “take a road trip.”

#4: Current automobiles are too noisy for their own good. The noise created by all the different types of internal combustion engines, from small hybrids that can barely be heard all the way out to big, smelly, diesel burning commercial trucks, with their loud engines, and everything in-between, including loud motorcycles! The roar of all of that combining with all those tires on pavement at high speed and you get lots of loud NOISE! Constant, endless, annoying, deafening, relentless vehicle noise!

#5: Current automobiles, the transportation infrastructure, and the planet cannot continue to sustain the status quo due to the sheer amount of carbon already in the atmosphere. With climate change already beginning and now a certain, and hard reality to face, the time is now for huge changes in the ways that were are currently doing many things so that we can turn the corner and get started on the healing of our planet.

The time has come to rethink what we need, how much of it we really do need, and how we are going to get it or have it brought to us. The future quality of all of our lives is mostly at stake right now. If we do not change our ways now, later the situation will worsen, and morph into becoming more about whether or not we even have a future in which we will be able to exist at all.

Self driving cars to the rescue! All electric, rechargeable, little things that quietly come to retrieve you and safely transport you to your destination, while you catch up on your email, texting, novel writing, or e-zine reading. Quiet, safe, efficient. So efficient, that there needs to be a lot fewer of them.

While you are visiting your friend or attending your meeting, the car that transported you there is now tending to others giving them rides to their destinations to optimize the trip and maximize the benefit derived from the energy used to get these trips accomplished.

You will likely have more money for other things, as you will not need to privately “own” a car any longer. In fact, doing so might be cost prohibitive. No private ownership means no maintenance costs, no insurance costs, no registration costs etc. Some of that may or may not turn out to end up being offset by a ride subscription model where for a certain amount of money per month, you would get unlimited rides or similar. But, one thing is certain, the planet will be getting megatons less carbon as a result of this one change!

Even busy streets will be much quieter, and much safer due to fewer total vehicles on the roads, and the cars that are all utilize sensors and LIDAR and will know when there is danger to be avoided. Every existing route to anywhere will all become known, added to all databases, and shared so that when you say you need to be somewhere by a certain time, the robot or software sub-routine would know, based on real-time data, how long it’s going to take to pick you up, using the nearest available transport pod, and then get you safely where you need to go ON TIME, factoring in all current conditions, like traffic, weather, and construction.

Even commercial vehicles will know cleanliness and become much quieter! I can’t wait! It’s all beginning to happen quietly in the catacombs of the tech industry and manufacturers that support them NOW. Globally, there are a couple of hundred car makers working on all electric vehicles, some with hot swap-able batteries. There are autonomous driving vehicles already making deliveries, drones are beginning to deliver things, and soon you’ll be able to order up an Uber or similar with your phone app, but instead of a person picking you up, it will be a car that drives itself!

But “what about the lost jobs?” you might ask. Well, 99% of those who pick up people and transport them for a living HATE their jobs and get treated terribly by the people they drive. These “riders” often do not see them as people at all. So what better poetic justice than that! In the end, the driver was replaced by what he was treated like, a robot, non-human, and the riders who treated them that way will now have to contend with the adjustment of conversing with a machine that knows no emotion and is strictly utilitarian!

Job loss due to invention is nothing new, and in this particular case, is one of those cost-vs-benefit scenarios. Humans who lose their jobs being treated inhumanely and are then replaced by non-human drivers will be a small price to pay in order to facilitate this transition for the greater good of all of humanity. At least some of them will be able to be trained to maintain the new taxi’s or program them, and some, if not all of these PEOPLE might actually gladly give up their jobs in light of what’s at stake.

Sometimes disruptive changes force other (good) changes that are long overdue. I think this is one of those times and I think, for the planet’s sake, it’s long overdue and very much needs to happen. I know it is and I’m glad it is, and I embrace this transition. I hope it happens even faster than anyone might think possible.

The sooner the world becomes cleaner, quieter, and safer, the better off we’ll all be. The status quo is unsustainable and brings along with it dire consequences for all of us.

Hooray! All electric, re-chargeable, hot-swap-able, self-driving cars to the rescue!