As you can tell from previous posts, I am passionate about cars, driving, and motorsport. That is why I was fascinated by a November 16, 2017 New York Times article entitled “The Near Future of Driving: Eyes Forward, but No Hands at 10 and 2.” The article discusses how the author, Neal Boudette, was driving on an interstate in Michigan, with the car doing all of the driving for long stretches of time (acceleration, maintaining speed, braking, and maneuvering), with no driver input, and his hands off the steering wheel (“hands-free driving”). This feature was not in some futuristic car, but in a Cadillac you can buy right now.

Full autonomous vehicles are coming, and offer many advantages — one being that people with diminished capabilities or senses will be able to drive (e.g., older drivers who no longer have the capacity to drive, or physically challenged individuals who could never drive before). Now they can use a car to get around, without relying on others, or alternative transportation. Another advantage is that such cars can counter distracted driving, for example, when someone is bored, and stuck in traffic, the car can take over, allowing the driver sit back and enjoy the ride, rather than having to be constantly alert and stressed by the traffic around them.  Potentially, linked cars, with smart roads, will be able to diminish highway traffic flow, while also improving safety.

However, there are some significant drawbacks. One being the further loss of privacy since, for these autonomous systems to work, the car must constantly be updating its position, and transmitting that information to some central location. Big brother will always know where you are. Which points out another drawback — since these systems are computerized, they are also susceptible to hacking, so one or many cars could be hacked and intentionally crashed. Just recently, I read an article of how car thieves were using an electronic device, positioned near a car owners house, to amplify the signal from the car owner’s key fob inside the house (which is always broadcasting), and use the amplified signal to open, start and steal the owner’s Mercedes S Class, which was outside the owner’s house. Imagine the disastrous results if something like that happened on a large scale, and while cars are moving on a road.

A few years ago, my work took me to Microsoft’s cyber-security division in Washington State, and the topic of autonomous vehicles came up.  It was a meeting of attorneys, and my question was on the liability side of whether the car manufacturer or software supplier would be liable for crashes, and also, how would the car make moral judgments. Regarding the latter, consider the following scenario: your large SUV comes across a patch of black ice, loses control, and is headed for a head-on collision with an oncoming small economy car with a baby on board. In your car is you and a passenger, and you car’s computer decides it can take 3 courses of action to try and mitigate the carnage of the upcoming accident. The first action will avoid a full head on collision, but will likely get you killed, another course of action will also avoid a full head on collision, but will like likely kill your passenger, and the third course of action will leave you and your passenger injured yet alive, but the other car’s occupants will likely be killed. What will you car be programed to do?  That question is being hotly discussed by some people, and seemingly ignored by others.

These are just some of the issues society will be grappling with in the coming years. Right now, I am very happy to still have control of my car, but have the ability to engage or disengage driving assist technology (e.g., auto-cruise, lane departure warning, automatic braking, blind spot detection). By the way, the article’s author was wrong about one thing, right now it is best to keep one’s hand at 9 and 3 on the steering wheel, rather than 10 and 2 (as he suggests) and which has been taught in the past. What is current convention wisdom is that 9 and 3 provides better control of the car (that is why most steering wheels have indents at 9 and 3 for the driver’s thumbs), and also since upon deployment of steering wheel airbag, hands at 10 and 2 will be pushed into the driver’s head, whereas at 9 and 3, the drive might still be able to hold on to the steering wheel, and at worst, their arms would be pushed sideways. As an aside, I read an article by AAA which proposed holding the steering wheel at 8 and 4, which is also good should the airbag go off, but is an awful position for controlling the steering wheel, and in my opinion, should be completely avoided.