Tag Archives: driverless cars

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Back Seat Games Set To Move Forward

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Today’s post comes from marketing whiz Spin Williams, who is always in residence at The Meeting That Never Ends.

Wow!

I’m just back from a 9 day car trip through Iowa, Wisconsin, Missouri, Arkansas, Tennessee and Illinois, and boy, is my butt tired!

There are some big states on that list, and it takes a lot of sitting to get through them. Good thing meetings are my business, because my hindquarters were already road-ready before I left!

Along the way, I had lots of time to think about the coming transportation revolution, when autonomous cars will do most or all of the driving for us. Different states will write different laws to govern this, but my guess is that in most places our job as the “driver” will have some very basic elements:

  • Don’t be drunk
  • Don’t be asleep

Mostly, summer road trips of the future will expand the boredom of the back seat to the entire car, since your only real job will be to sit and watch the scenery go by.

Are there marketing opportunities there? You bet!

When we kicked this around at The Meeting That Never Ends, everybody agreed that backseat car games are due for a renaissance.

In the self-driving car future, everybody will be able to give all their attention to classics like 20 Questions, I Spy, and License Plate Poker.

But once the “driver” is able to swivel her seat and face the backseat passengers as the car picks its own way through road construction around Wisconsin Dells, we predict there will be a whole slew of new games the group can play, including card games and board games.

All we have to do is figure out what the breakaway hit will be in the realm of Whole Family Backseat Car Games, design it, own it, and then wait for technology to catch up.

Any ideas?  

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Dangerous Loophole

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I just received a breathless note from Bathtub Safety Officer Rafferty – a man so easily alarmed he ought to know better than to spend his precious spare time reading newspapers. Every page has something guaranteed to ring his bell. And yet he allowed himself to get drawn in to an article in the New York Times about the federal government and driverless cars.

Automatons!
Automatons!

As a result, he is pleading with me to use my vast connection with potentially dozens of blog readers to generate concern about the coming auto-dronepocalypse on our streets and highways.

“I don’t think people are fully aware of the potential threat posed by these road robots! Don’t get me wrong – I have more faith in machines than I do in people. Every human being is a string of accidents waiting to happen! But these autonomous autos were designed and built by humans, and because they are the result of the work of fools, there is no way they can be foolproof!”

But the thing that really got him was this quote from the article:

It is up to state and local governments to decide whether autonomous or semiautonomous cars are allowed on public roads. States including California, Nevada and Florida have already legalized driverless cars. They are not explicitly illegal in other states, because there is no law that says cars must have drivers.

“‘… there is no law that says cars must have drivers!’ Do you realize what this means? It is a gigantic loophole in our legal code – big enough for your mammoth SUV to drive through with all its sensors and GPS turned off! Apparently anything goes as long as you can prove you weren’t the one driving the vehicle. And once vehicles become blame-able, things are going to get very strange out on the roads. My advice – stay away from all interstates, state highways, county roads, city streets, cul-de-sacs, alleyways, driveways and cart paths for the next twenty years, until all this autonomous locomotion business gets sorted out! That’s what I’m going to do, and I suggest you do it too!”

I usually don’t take B.S.O.R.’s advice, and I’m not sure that it’s even possible to live in America in 2013 without going near roads. And surely there would be safety hazards to going cross-country all the time. Ticks, for one. Poison ivy too. Not to mention the drones overhead – another kind of autonomous vehicle.

Still, it does make me wonder what sort of life one could lead if the goal was to stay clear of all traffic.

Where is your favorite off-road area?