Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities

Driverless cars may come sooner than you think

I don’t know about you, but when I was growing up I really figured that one day that Jetson car that George commuted to work in every day would one day be reality.

It might not fly, but we may not be all that far away from driverless cars. They’re experimenting with them right now.

Many were the times when facing a long drive late at night, I’ve longed for an automatic car that I could simply punch the destination into a console on the dash and fall asleep with confidence. In the West, after all, sometimes our roads can be mighty lonely and mighty deserted. Sounds like an easy place for technology to take over.

If you start paying attention to news stories and read a little, it becomes apparent that many companies have already come a long way with driverless technology — I just don’t think the public is too aware of it. I suspect if we don’t start paying attention to what’s happening around us, one day we’ll look over in the lane next to us and the guy behind the wheel will be reading his newspaper like George Jetson or watching a movie like kids in the rear seats have done for the last decade plus.

One article I read on the subject used polls throughout the piece that gauged how much trust folks would have in the technology. It was actually polling out with less trust than I figured.

The same article launched into the debate over how this coming technology will be adopted. Will it happen in one fell swoop (suddenly we’ll go by a driverless car) or incrementally like we’ve adopted automotive technology for the last century or more. Cruise control and air bags seemed a little far-fetched at one time, now you practically can’t buy a new car without those features.

Traditional car companies seem to be banking on the incremental change method but apparently they’ve got company in the race to the future. In case you haven’t heard, Google is liberally investing some of the gazillions of dollars they’ve made online and in making mapping software toward driverless technology. Not to be outdone, even Apple may be working on the iCar or some such crazy thing.

The technology companies like Google and Apple want to revolutionize the way we live while car companies are working to secure market share and next year’s hot new option.

As usual, I’m a little mixed up on this next wave of technology. I’ve complained a little about the lane detection sensors and other technology on my mother’s new car, figuring the bells and alarms that it set off might make some drivers overreact. On the other hand, one day while I was still working as a car salesman I was on the way back to the dealership in a new vehicle equipped with earlier generations of the same technology and it saved my bacon because of a vehicle lurking in my blind spot.

I suspect one day I’ll be driving a vehicle equipped with driverless technology. I’ll just name the new vehicle Kit or Herbie and assimilate with the future.

Karl Terry writes for Clovis Media Inc. Contact him at: [email protected]