Home, James: Cars that Drive Themselves?

You are driving through rush hour traffic, and you look into the cute little orange van next to you, but nobody is driving. The steering wheel is moving itself. The gas pedal is pumping footless. You, the driver, have just become irrelevant. Unneeded. Just an unnecessary side thought on this car’s journey. A passenger.

As October was wrapping up, so was the Italian researchers’ 8,000-mile journey from Italy through China. With lasers and video cameras, the solar powered vans navigated. But what all the news reports don’t reveal up front is that technology has its limits. Like stopping every 8 hours to charge these driverless vans. Like the fender bender they got into when the HUMANS in the car forgot to turn off the system upon stopping. Like having to MAN the vehicles at tollbooths and in very heavy traffic (The Associated Press). So, while we are giving technology some major credit for progress, we have to ask whether humans are ever going to be truly obsolete?