Two sentences explaining why your self-driving car won’t have a steering wheel

[RV_]

It seems that self driving cars are right around the corner! Google among others, including leader Tesla, are testing their models at a town that is also only manned by automatons.

 

Until I read this article I had a vision of a car I was still at the controls of, but just not grabbing the controls. I really had no idea they would have no steering wheels or other controls inside for our emergency use. Then I thought about this article and it makes sense. But how would I feel the first time I had a vehicle driving at 70 plus mph?

 

The lack of needing a driver, even to sit in one place just in case, has the advantage of my being able to draw the curtains so I can change my underwear.

 

Excerpt:

 

"Last week I shared some photos from inside Google’s prototype of a self-driving car. The reactions were about as polarized as I’ve ever seen on a blog post I’ve written. The first group of readers were amazed, and they wanted to know where they could buy one. Everyone else was terrified of the interior. A car that they could never steer? No thanks.

 

The problem with including a steering wheel in a self-driving car is that human drivers can’t be trusted to effectively take over in sticky situations. So the makers of driverless cars can’t responsibly include a steering wheel.

 

Reid Hoffman, the renowned Silicon Valley investor and LinkedIn co-founder, relayed some telling research from Stefan Heck, the founder of Nauto, a self-driving car start-up:

Research that Stanford has done shows that drivers resuming control from Level 3 vehicles functioning in autonomous mode take 10 seconds just to attain the level of ability that a drunk driver possesses. And to get back to full driving competence takes 60 seconds.

 

That’s a full 10 seconds just to function at the level of someone who shouldn’t be behind the wheel. A self-driving car cruising at 70 mph is unlikely to have 60 or even 10 seconds to wait for a human to take over."

 

Links and pics and more at the article page here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/innovations/wp/2015/07/21/two-sentences-explaining-why-your-self-driving-car-wont-have-a-steering-wheel/?wpisrc=nl_innov&wpmm=1

[sandsys]

Those of us who spend most of our time in the passenger seat might make this transition easier than the ones who usually drive. We are used to feeling out of control.

 

Linda Sand

[sandsys]

This also reminds me of when cruise control was new. Dave's mother complained about the lag time it took to set or release the cruise feature.

 

Linda