Many thanks to the Trail Baboon guest bloggers for giving me a week-long blog holiday. Steve, Jacque, Anna, Barbara, Renee, Donna and tim took the lead while I spent a few days not thinking about, reading or even glancing at the blog. It was a carefree respite because I knew things were in good hands and it was a nice break from the routine. But I also missed the conversation and the many pleasures of being part of a friendly congress of baboons, so I’m equally delighted to be back. It will take me a few days to read through all your comments on the previous entries, but I aim to catch up!
While I was not paying attention, the following missive arrived from our good friend Bubby Spamden.
Hey Mr. C.,
I know we’re supposed to be concentrating on our schoolwork, but the sophomores here at Wendell Wilkie High School are really distracted by the news that Google has been secretly testing a fleet of 7 cars that can drive themselves. The cars have gone over 140 thousand accident free miles with minimal human intervention, which is a lot better than 7 high school sophomores can do.
Some adults think this is a great idea, but me and my friends, we’re kinda ticked off.
If you don’t get that, think of it this way – you’re just about old enough to get your license and your mom goes, “You know what honey? I think I’ll just quit my job and be your chauffeur. For the rest of your life. OK?”
Weird, huh? I actually know a kid whose mom said that.
Speaking for all the almost-16 year olds, we haven’t really known a world that didn’t have Google in it. And Google has kind of been a mom and dad for us, because whenever we want to know something, that’s who we ask. We figured out a long time ago that our biological mom and dad are kinda clueless about most everything.
And now mom is hanging on to the car keys? No thanks!
Some of my smarter friends also figured out that there’s nothing you can do online that isn’t remembered and noticed. Getting control of the car meant maybe we could finally go somewhere and do something where some body wouldn’t be looking over our shoulder. But now with Google behind the wheel, every trip will be part of our history of sites visited. Drat!
And what’s worse, the cars have cameras in them. Double drat!
We have to do something to stop this project! Without car-key based freedoms, my generation will have no reason to work or even to move out of the house. That means there’ll be no incentive to apply for all the non-existent jobs. And if we’re not working, who will fund the social security payments that you and all your old bloggers are counting on? Try to see it our way. This is an emergency!
Where you see a safety advance, we see the complete and total loss of any chance that we might actually have fun someday.
Anyway, I’m hoping you and your blog people can be on our side in this one. Speak out! Defend our youthful autonomy, rather than giving in to this scary auto tyranny by Google.
Your pal,
Bubby.
I told Bubby I couldn’t agree with him completely. For one thing, youthful indiscretions are overrated. And as a person who, as a 16 year old, totaled my father’s prize Corvair, I can’t argue that teenage driving skills are more reliable than a computer. Still, I don’t think the Google car project will ever be a realistic threat to Bubby’s freedom. Liability concerns will slow widespread adoption of the technology, and although it looks promising in these early stages, how many times have you started surfing on the internet with a clear destination in mind only to wind up a million miles away from where you thought you were headed? How will that tendency translate to a cross country trip, a Thanksgiving jaunt to Grandma’s house, or even a “quick” trip to the store? I’m not all that excited about climbing into my Googlemobile and clicking “I’m feeling lucky.”
Would you let a computer drive the car?
Trail Baboon 
Hi, Dale! welcome back! the fill-in bloggers did a great job -lots of chat on great subjects.
no. i am way too stubborn and independent to let a computer drive the car. anyway, that would mean getting a new car, which isn’t in the plan. the Goatmobile (RAV4 that we use to carry feed, hay, goats) is just getting broken in real nice at 167,000 miles and the Yaris lets me drive it very nicely. i can see that, if a computer is driving it might not take you where you want to go – or even worse, take you where it wants to go, like the mall or something. nope. nope. nope. i’m with Bubby on this one.
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Rise and Shine Babooners:
Welcome back Dale! I look forward to hearing about the conference, etc.
I could never allow a computer to drive my car — there are just too many control issues that require more letting go than I can do, especially on 494 on the way to work. I struggle with this on airplanes, too which I hear are entirely computer driven. I’d rather take a bus or train and really kick back and relax with a human in charge.
Can you text (or if you are Brett Favre, sext) and drive a computer driven car and abdicate all attentional functions entirely?
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welcome back dale, maybe this car thing is the best ever. it could be set up to be lie a car pool where it honks in front of your house and then goes and picks everybody up and then drops them off at work. waits for them like a faithful dog and takes them home. they can read the paper and pour coffee just like riding the train or the bus except you can leave your gym bag in the trunk and make a side trip to the grocery store after it is done with chores. heck do you even need to go to the store? just send the car a note pad and put it on the e account and sam drucker can fill the order.
then have it spin by the liquor store and get a bottle of scotch in case froends stopped by.i’ll bet you could ep it busy all day with groupe errands and create hours of free time.
how could we teach it to paint the house???
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tim, leave it to you to take the automatic car idea far beyond what Google is doing.
Sending my Toyota to the liquor store for a bottle of scotch is a mind-bender. Would that cut down on DWI, or make things worse? How can the car prove it has been sent by someone of legal age? If the scotch tips over and cracks open in transit, can the car be pulled over and impounded on an open bottle violation?
So many questions!
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Morning!
Wouldn’t it be cool if it worked as tim describes? …I’m not going to hold my breath for this though…
I assume I can program it to take a different route home as desired? And it will avoid the potholes and dead skunks in the middle of the road? (Anyone remember that song?
Mike, you got that one?)
And let’s not stop at the house, tim; paint the barn, corn crib and machine shed while it’s at it!
Later–
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dead skunk was loudan wainwright’s only mainstream hit
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Greetings! While I partially agree with Bubby and Jacque about letting a smart car do the driving can be unnerving and possibly a loss of freedom — it’s something I’ve dreamed of! I do not like driving, have terrible eyesight, get lost easily and tire very quickly when driving. I always figured if they had a way to put sensors on roads and other cars, my vehicle could easily navigate the roads, all cars would move at same speed and stay the same, safe distant apart, there would be no gawk effect and everything would go smoothly.
Then I could do things I enjoy while riding: read, sleep, chat, play games, etc. It’s certainly a step up from a highway system full of stressed out, road raging, inattentive, sleepy or texting folks that are currently on the road driving. Just last week, I was at a stop in a slow and go construction zone and was rear-ended by a guy obviously not paying attention. Bring on the smart cars, I say!
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Good morning to all and welcome back Dale,
In the link about the self driving cars it says that they would do a lot to reduce traffic accidents. I guess a technology that can do this would certainly be very attractive. The Google cars are not 100% self driven. Very rarely the person riding in the car does take over driving when they see some thing that they think the car can’t manage by it’s self. This could be a problem because it would be difficult to stay alert to potential problems when the car is doing almost all of the driving.
Of course, it would be very hard to give up driving for many people who really love driving cars which is probably almost everybody in our car crazed society Certainly young or not so young guys who own very sporty cars would want to do their own driving.
Bubby could be right about the privacy issue. We already have problems with privacy that has been violated by the government that has been justified by the war againest terrorism. Bubby doesn’t want his parents to know about every place he goes and we don’t want “big brother” to be able to track all our movements.
I like doing things for myself, but if a self driving car would be safer, I would have to give it serious consideration. Cars are dangerous machines and something that would make them significantly safer would save a lot of lives.
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Better a computer than a teenage driver!
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Yes, those teenage drivers are very scary and I wasn’t a good driver, myself, at that age.
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i was a great driver. it was all those other idiots.
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I think a computer would have some trouble estimating where the deer running in the ditch would decide to make its break onto the highway. I think, though, that in the outback where I live, a computer could manage most other challenges given the lack of traffic and lack of curves in the road.
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We’d get the DNR to insert a microchip in all the deer, Renee. And in bicyclists, too. That way the car would know when they were around and wouldn’t make sailcats of them. Really, the possibilities are endless. You could program the Googlemobile to make a noise to terrify deer and send them running toward Iowa. A good wolf howl should work. For bicyclists, maybe the car could snarl “I’m Tom Emmer and I’m high as a frickin’ kite!”
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excellent
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Every time automation moves in on a new area of human activity the predictable response is that no (machine/computer/gadget/feature) can replace a human being. And maybe at first that is true. Inexorably, inevitably, the (machine/computer/gadget /feature) gets better and better until nobody would argue that humans do it better. I remember all the harrumphing about autofocus in photography and all the sincere speeches about how only the artistic eye of a human being should be trusted to know what should be in focus. Those discussions look silly now.
The more I reflect on the fallibility of human beings, the less impressed I am. In the most recent train wreck there was a conductor, but he seems to have been texting. Other collisions happen because train operators are stoned.
Does any parent of a teen driver really think that computers would be worse drivers than kids? Or would you prefer that there was no possibility that your kid would speed, go somewhere he/she shouldn’t, drive while high, tailgate, drive aggressively or drive while distracted? Sounds good to me!
I knew a woman whose daughter was such a heedless driver that Connie prayed each night that her girl would have an accident that wouldn’t injure anyone. The idea was that only accidents would teach the girl to shape up and drive prudently. That was an impressive demonstration for me of the power of prayer: the girl had four fender benders in six weeks. And she was still a rotten driver.
Bring on the Googlemobiles!
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Hey, welcome back, Dale! Did you do any drumming with Robert Bly? I think we’re all curious about how your MC gig went.
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The concert was terrific, Steve. We had John Hermanson, Mother Banjo, Meg Hutchinson and John Gorka along with poets Freya Manfred and Robert Bly.
That’s a lot of talent to squeeze into a couple of hours, and in fact the show ran a little long. As MC it was my job to keep things moving and to never, never, never forget that the less said by me, the better. I did have to get more involved than I wanted to in the interests of helping one performer realize that time was up. All in all, we came in under 3 hours, but I think the school janitor was overfull with poetry by that time and, like some in the audience, just wanted to go home.
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Yikes, I didn’t know that about the train wrecks. What comes to mind, Steve, is an image of Homer Simpson asleep at the switch in the nuclear power plant…
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Yikes!
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Let’s not be too sure that a new technology will turn out to be a good thing. There must be lots of new technologies that failed or turned out badly that we don’t remember. Those things are easy to forget. Can you remember any? In fact there are some that are very dreadful that turned out badly, but let’s not dwell on those. I think there is or was a museum of strange medical devices that probably is filled with failed devices that might have looked like promising new technology in their day.
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Sorry Jim, I think they closed that museum. I only know this because my brother heard about it and wanted to go, but it wasn’t open any more. Maybe somebody reopened it?
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I think it is closed, Alanna, but I was sure about that.
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the do it yourself brain surgery contraption was my favorite
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Would I let a computer drive a car??? Sure, what could possibly go wrong? Oh, hang on…my computer just crashed…
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teehee
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Welcome back Dale – hope the days away were rejuvenating, refreshing, and several other re- words.
I will admit to being the sort who likes to drive. This is not to say that I am a total “gear head” or drive places I could just as easily walk or bike, I just enjoy it when the opportunity arises. I am also a dyed-in-the-wool manual shift transmission kinda gal. I have owned exactly one automatic transmission car and it took me almost a full year to quit pushing down the air with my left foot to shift when I wanted to (and to remember to put it in Park when I was parking). I like the smooth move of the gear shift from 1st through 5th, the idea that I am part of the big auto machine…sure I could get some reading done in a Googlemobile, but I doubt it’d be as much fun as a 5 speed transmission on an open road.
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Ditto, Anna, about manual transmissions. We have for the first time an automatic, and while I do love it in stop and go traffic, I still miss working those pedals.
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I’m a manual tranmission gal as well. When I got my license (back in the stone ages, according to the teenager), my mom had a convertible Volkswagen bug. I drove that car everywhere. Ever since then, it just seems right to have a stickshift!
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I’m with you Anna, Barbara and Sherrilee. All three of our cars are manuals. I don’t know if that means resale will be easy, or very hard.
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Me too! Always have enjoyed manual transmission. Good fuel economy too!
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i have a rule that all my kids learn to drive only with a manual transmission. after they get their license and burn through their first car it is open for discussion, not before.
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Morning all.
This topic hits WAY too close to home. As the mother of a 15 1/2 year old with a learner’s permit, I feel like I take my life in my hands two or three times a day. Although I can’t imagine that letting a computer drive would make me feel any less safe, at least w/ the teenager I can say “slow down” or “you don’t have to be that close to the car in front of us”!
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My 15 year old talks of taking her permit test but just doesn’t seem to get around to it. That’s fine with me. I think she reasons that why should she learn to drive if her best friend can drive them to where they need to go? Best friend will graduate after next year, so maybe her absence will be a motivator. In ND, kids can get their license at 14. That is scary! I know there are fewer vehicles with which to collide out here, but I don’t think it is safe.
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I love to drive, at least on the open road, plus I don’t like the idea of relinquishing control, so I don’t want one. But as my mother creeps toward the inability to drive herself around, I would welcome a car like that for her, so she could retain that independence, esp. in winter…
Yep, welcome back, Dale, wish I could have made it to Sauk Center last Friday eve, but was it videoed? on You-Tube? 🙂
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I drive a LOT. It would be nice to be able to set the car on auto pilot on the long trips to Minnesota, but I don’t think I would feel completely safe. When I drive, I pay more attention to the sides of the road than the road itself (have to up here, you never know what will jump in front of you – deer, bear, raccoon, wolf, fox, coyote, porcupine, heron…all animals I’ve seen on my drive to and from work in the last six months). I don’t think a computer would be able to respond correctly to something jumping out in its path. Also, in the winter, I would never use it because icy/snowy roads take a delicate touch. Since winter lasts 6-9 months, I’d hardly get my money’s worth.
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Alanna, how long does it take you to drive from the UP to the Cities?
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From where I live, 7 to 7.5 hours, depending on traffic. If I leave from work, it cuts off a half hour. It also depends on where I’m going in the cities. If I’m going to my parents’ in Owatonna, it’s more like 8 hours.
On the subject of my earlier post, ironically, I hit a deer on my drive home from work today. 7 years of living in the UP and I hit a deer hours after talking about watching for them. I think I jinxed myself.
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Aw… bummer about the deer.
You forgot to knock on wood, or turn and spit or something, eh?
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sorry to hear about the accident alanna, you ok? the deer? the car?
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Yes, Alanna, I also hope you got through the deer collision without a scratch. I was driving when our car was hit by a deer on the open prairie in Central Illinois back in 1999, and I can attest to how quickly they come out of the roadside ditch.
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I’m fine, but my car is going to need some body work. Luckily I’m fully covered insurance wise, but it’s a pain trying to figure out who’s reputable. My friend works at an autoshop and told me who they recommend people to. I’ll be going there soon. My car is still drivable, but I’m trying not to push it. The hood could catch a breeze and fly up. I’m not sure if there’s anything holding it down anymore.
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Oh, and as for the deer, I have no idea. It hit the front of my car, flew up onto my windshield, and then disappeared. I looked back, but it wasn’t on the road. It either landed in the ditch or took off running again. There isn’t any blood on my car, so I think I only thunked into it. I had braked, but I don’t know if it was enough.
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When I think about all the small decisions a driver has to make, like just getting across a busy cross street (do I go now? Now? NOW?), it boggles my mind to imagine the programming necessary to make a car “drive itself.” Or maybe I should say it Googles my mind.
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yep that decision on when to go tells you all you need to know about the driver. program it for grandma, dale or ernhardt. i have to bite my lip when my wife comes to an intersection, i’ve seen some great sunsets…
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Ha! What makes you think I’m a bigger risk taker than grandma?
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touche’
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Welcome back, Dale! I hope you had a great time!
I’m with Bubby. I’d like to be able to just let go and let the car do it for me but I can’t believe it’s possible. Like TGiTH said, Oh, hang on…my computer just crashed…
And like everyone else has observed, how would it know about the raccoons, deer, rabbits, squirrels, turtles, snakes, frogs, songbirds, pets, and even small children chasing balls?
When you think about people using cell phones, shaving or doing make-up, reading or whatever else they’re doing when they should be driving, it’s tempting to think that self-navigated cars would be better. I’m just not ready to trust technology that far yet.
There was a short discussion above related to driving with a manual transmission. Our family had a Saab with a 4-speed manual transmission when I was a teenager. My mom taught me how to drive it. We lived in the country. I could dump the clutch as often as I needed to on those gravel roads and no one was around to care. Once I learned, I never looked back. I’ve driven Honda Civics with 4 or 5-speed manual transmissions since 1979. My first car was a ’75 Civic with a 4-speed. My current car is a 2002 Civic with a 5-speed. It’s been getting about 36 mpg. The car addiction will be a hard one for me to break.
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so it sounds like everyone is recommending that the computer teach the googlemobile to drive a stick. if you want to but i think an automatic would be easier. couldn’t you put a cow catcher on the front of the car for those street critters? kids …well they would grow up knowing that the cars will run over little butts over so stay the heck out of the road. if the roads are tough the car will say”stay home” we can all cheer snow days again or ride the ” 4 wheel arctic cat multi passenger bad weather transport vehicle” (mpbwtv) only brought out on snow days complete with coffee donuts and the new york time in the morning runs and cocktail hour with bar snacks for the way home.
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