Self-Driving Cars: The First Step to Insanity

I feel like I might be the only person saying this, but…isn’t the idea of a self-driving car crazy? 

Right now there are just too many variables on the road for me to feel confident in taking my hand off the wheel. I know that I am no scientist or engineer and that years of calculations and testing have already gone into the technology that the likes of Google, Uber and others are already employing, but this one doesn’t pass the smell test. 

What do you do when there’s construction, an accident or even just a pot hole? How quickly can a vehicle’s “driver” get back to operating the wheel when there’s a significant disturbance in front of them?

Even as a regular old driver, are YOU comfortable seeing a car in the lane next to you where the driver is reading a newspaper?

Call me a skeptic, fine. I have a hard time believing that one day we should be okay with this. What’s next?

• Ambulances?
• Police cars?
• Buses?
• Garbage trucks?
• Planes (which practically are already at this point)? 
• Traffic cops?

There are a lot of questions that people haven’t asked yet that they need to start. Does no more drivers mean no more speeding tickets? What do local and state governments do about all that lost revenue? Insurance…how is that going to work?

As a parent, are you comfortable programming your car to take your kid to school? What if their school bus was self-driving?

A lot of interesting things to ponder here. One thing I do like is that this could help the elderly get around- people who would have otherwise had to rely on someone else to keep them mobile.

This could all be pretty cool if everyone had one, but how do our drivers and our infrastructure handle both manual-driven and self-driving cars together?

I think my grandkids will one day question me, “Grandpa, you drove a car!? What was that like?”