Every day we
hear someone or the other, thinking of ways to replace the traditional human
driver from the car, thus removing driver error from the equation all together
which seems like a good idea…in theory.
But what I feel
it’s just a disaster waiting to happen; when we adopt autonomous driving we
will only be digging our own graves. In countries like India especially, one of
the problem would be that a computer must follow rules. Whereas an average
fully educated Indian, even one who spends most of his life in Kuh-nay-dda[Canada] or Amerka[America], when he or she returns to India, has no comprehension of
what the term ‘regulation’ means. The autonomous driving computers inside the
car would turn into a black hardened prune---it would get fried in a matter of
minutes. The reasons for that is simple, India says one thing and does the
other. We are probably the only people in the world who drive right hand drive
cars slowly on the far right side lane (meant for the fastest vehicles) and over
take from the left. This has become so natural these days that if anyone over
takes from the right, you get the shock of your life as you hurl abuses at him
and tell him or her that he or she can’t drive.
Also there is
another problem when we look at the scenario in India. We are also the cheapest
yet laziest people in the world. We Indians will buy a Tata Nano for Rs 1.8
lakh and hire a chauffeur to drive us around. But the catch is that his monthly
salary will be almost double of the equated monthly installment that one has to
pay for the car! WHY?? But coming back to the point, if we accept autonomously
drivable cars, we will put more people on the street, hence more congestion and
more people to blindly walk across the roads, therefore rendering it pointless.
Some of you
may argue that yes it “may not” work in India, or parts of Africa and China, which
includes the majority of the population of the world, but in Europe and the
Americas it will and the technology from Audi with the autonomously driving RS7
going around Hockenhiem at racing speeds is
a marvel. Here is another problem. If these cars can drive perfectly
like that on their own, soon we wouldn’t need racing drivers anymore. Most
racing drivers are born in cars and live their lives in cars throughout, all
they can do is drive and that’s it. That is the only skill some of them
possess. More unemployment!
Another issue
is that some of us love our cars. Some of us love the feeling of driving, the
sensation of speed and acceleration, the skip of a heart beat when you get a
really difficult corner accurately, or the heart attack when you are about to
crash. Autonomous driving will take that pleasure away from us. The entire
reason why someone would by a Maserati and not a Fiat will become baseless and
redundant if you can’t drive it at all. Super car makers like Ferrari or
Lamborghini will be bankrupt and will have no reason to build car in the first
place. Yes there are some idiots who buy them to show off, but they usually
don’t last very long because they end up hugging to a tree somewhere far away
from the road covered in blood and no seatbelt. But there are some of us who
love them and buy them or drive them because we can. We love the feeling of
accurate steering, instant throttle response and G-forces that rip your face
off and leave skid marks on the road and your underwear. It’s an escape for us,
an escape from our everyday monotonous lives, a sort of rebirth or a reminder
of what it was like to be a child and have a little bit of fun in a world of
businessmen making all the business-kind of decisions. It makes us happy to be
children again for that brief moment, let down our hair or bald patches and pull
out your inner 5 year old. That’s what it’s all about.
But the
scariest of the perils of autonomous driving --- they may become a huge
contributor to–“Cyborg warfare”. Yes, self driving cars are just another step
towards Judgment day. In the Terminator movies of James Cameron, the basic
synopsis is: humans build machine–machine work for humans–machine develops
consciousness–machine kill human. This leads to war between man and machine, machines
disable over ride button, and takes control on their own. This leads to
Judgment Day also known as the apocalypse as James Cameron would like to see
and it would end the world as we know it. Yes it would be cooler to have
Cyborgs walking around, but they will kill you.
So my theory
is this, what if cars start thinking for themselves? What if they tell us where
we must go? What if they decide about our lives? Or what if they turn on us and
run us over? What if they become autonomous Cyborgs? After Autonomous cars,
what next? Autonomous drones? Autonomous Tanks? Autonomous fighter planes? How
worse can it get?