LOOK MA! NO HANDS!

In Tucson, the speed limit on Glen Street is 25m.p.h., and since there’s not much traffic on Glen, it’s tempting to drive faster than the posted limit. That’s when people find out that “the best automobile safety device is a rear-view mirror with a cop in it.” (Dudley Moore). Consequently, Glen is the only place where I ever use my cruise control, and for a couple of miles, my vehicle turns into a driverless car.

Self-driving, robotic cars are on the horizon, and experimental driverless technology is now being tested on public roads in Nevada, Washington, California, Florida, Texas and Arizona. A team of fifteen engineers working for Google developed self-driving cars. Sebastian Thrun former director of the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory led the team, and in 2005, the robotic vehicle won a $2million prize from the U.S. Department of Defense.

In 2014, Google presented a fully functioning prototype of a robotic car with no steering wheel or pedals. Their plan is to make these cars available to the public in 2020. Right now, we fly in computerized airplanes and sail in computer driven ships. Why not fully computerized, robotic cars?

For me, none of this is as terrifying as teaching a teenager to drive. When my son was 15, he was required to take Driver’s Ed in school. However, those cars all had automatic shifts, whereas, our new car was fashioned with a stick shift. So, for several days, I took my son to a church parking lot, and taught him to drive while manually shifting gears. He was in control.  I was not! After the third lesson, he said, “Mom, I think it’s time for you to let me drive in second gear.”

Since my husband had never manually sifted gears either, I had to teach him about the duties of a floor clutch---Foot on clutch to shift.  Shift will scream without a clutch----and, sometimes, the car will die in traffic when you fail to follow directions. That’s when I found out that a person really never learns to swear until he learns to drive.

As a kid, I learned to drive on the icy roads in South Dakota, the last State in the Union to require drivers’ licenses. It wasn’t unusual in those days to see 12-year-old children driving down a county road. Of course, with those little people driving, automobiles looked like driverless cars.

So far, driverless cars drive sober, so they have excellent safety records except when hit by nitwits. As long as humans are at the wheel, they cause 81% of all car crashes.

One issue still in limbo is the legal ramification of driverless cars.  Who do you sue? Even with a horse and buggy, the guy holding the whip was the driver. But then, there wasn’t any legal protection for the Wright Brothers when they took off on their first flight either.

 If you still are reluctant to own a driverless car, perhaps you might like a Cannabis Car made from hemp. A distant cousin to marijuana, this material is akin to a fiber-glass-like plastic. A photo of the beautiful, red car looked smokin’ hot to me! In 1941, Henry Ford unveiled the Soybean Car, but WWII derailed that car which was also constructed with hemp.

The day of driverless cars is coming.  If only, the inventors could make them fly. I can see it now---a driverless, hemp, drone automobile.

Esther Blumenfeld (“The shortest distance between two points is under construction”) Noelie Altito