I Think I’ll Take The Bus
“HOLY LIABILITIES, BATMAN!” Yet another reason to stay off of Interstate 70 has just reared its ugly head. The first “Driverless Car” has come to Terre Haute (That’s French for “Who is your insurance agent?”).
Maybe it is a coincidence or someone is making a sly statement, but the headline on the story in the local fish-wrap reads thusly: “First Driverless Car Hits the Market in Terre Haute.” Given the recent problems with this new technology “Hits the Market” may be more prescient than they think.
Folks in Terre Haute have a reputation for not being the best drivers on Earth. Around here a Red Light signal is interpreted to mean “Step on it!” The Yellow is completely meaningless and the Green stands for “What? Oh, the gas is the one on the right? OK, I’ll find it.” I fear that if you start adding driverless cars into the mix it will result in our local traffic patterns being sanctioned as a NASCAR Racing event.
Our first driverless car is a modified Cadillac. I would have chosen a smaller, less expensive car, a Hot Wheels perhaps, to cut down on the bent metal as it “Hits the Market.”
The Dealership puts the price tag at 75 – 80 thousand dollars for this Cadillac. I don’t think the modifications to make the car “Driverless” must have cost more than a couple of six-packs and an orange jumpsuit. I give it two weeks before some local Yahoo tries to steal it.
According to Google, who it appears is behind all of this “driverless” nonsense, our little Cadillac will be restricted to driving only on the Interstate Freeway because, “At high speeds the car can navigate around turns and congestion.”
Sure it can.
Can it navigate around a line of 18-Wheelers being driven by a bunch of drunken and drugged operators who haven’t slept since February?
Interstate 70 in this area is, to put it mildly, a Death Trap. There are high speed crashes involving trucks and cars almost every day. Into the middle of that let’s stick a few Driverless Cadillacs that will do nothing more than confuse the body count.
The High-Tech wizardry in this new Cadillac is that a tiny camera is mounted on top of the steering wheel. It is focused on the human driver’s eyes which are hopefully open. If the driver’s eyes wander away from being focused on the road ahead the car will automatically slow down. Slow down – not stop, according to the news release. The car would slow from 90 MOH down to 60 MPH before ramming into before slamming onto the overturned Driverless Semi filled with Marijuana and/or kidnapped Asian sex slaves.
Maybe I’m being overly skeptical or a bit of a Luddite about this whole idea. When I think of driverless cars I can’t help but think of “The Jetsons.” The Jetsons and a Demolition Derby. Three thousand pound slot cars zipping along the Interstate with no one in control. Actually, it’s a lot like that now out there on the highway. Maybe having some of the cars sans drivers will save lives. After all, if the road becomes blocked with wreckage and spilled cargo from all of the overturned trucks the remaining cars, with humans at the wheel, will have to take other roads and travel at slower speeds.
I wonder when we will all get those nifty flying cars that have been predicted as the Next Big Thing for the last 80 years.
Down the Hall on Your Left 