{"id":44488,"date":"2013-11-12T16:23:53","date_gmt":"2013-11-12T21:23:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.automoblog.com\/\/?p=44488"},"modified":"2023-11-01T18:25:42","modified_gmt":"2023-11-01T22:25:42","slug":"robo-cars-futures-coming-like","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.automoblog.com\/robo-cars-futures-coming-like\/","title":{"rendered":"Robo-Cars: The Future’s Coming (Like it or Not)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Growing up, my sister and I passed time\u00a0on family vacations by\u00a0playing road games and pissing each other off.\u00a0One of two things ended\u00a0these non-Hallmark moments in the family Bonneville: someone getting hurt or a driver cutting off my dad. Either way,\u00a0hell\u00a0would break\u00a0loose followed by a palpable silence and the 3.8-liter engine serving as\u00a0background noise.\u00a0If their Pontiac had been autonomous, it would have\u00a0simply braked. Any wrath would have been reserved for us.<\/p>\n

When it comes to self-driving\u00a0vehicles,\u00a0Pandora’s box is wide open. Manufacturers project these robo-cars to be on the roads by\u00a0the end of the decade. If you don’t like it, send Google a thank you note\u00a0or give a distracted driver the finger (joking…sort of). Kidding aside, would there be such a need for autonomous vehicles\u00a0if people were actually attentive?<\/p>\n

A 2012 study by the Society of Automobile Engineers reported that apparently a PhD is required to use a turn signal.\u00a0Twenty-five percent of observed\u00a0drivers failed to signal before turning, and almost half (48 percent) neglected to make any indication before switching lanes.<\/p>\n

C’mon, it’s a freaking turn signal. Along with door handles, air vents, and horn, it’s the most idiot-proof part to use. That’s just laziness.<\/p>\n

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I get that no one’s perfect. We’ve all been distracted when we shouldn’t have been, either digging for our phone, eating,\u00a0texting<\/a>, or changing songs. It’s also true that situations vary from city to city. I’d never think of doing anything but drive on Manhattan streets, but eating a McDouble and\u00a0searching\u00a0for something by ZZ Top in a town like Glenwood, IA seems a little more feasible.\u00a0I’m not condoning it by any means; it’s just that undoubtedly Glenwood has a micro-percent of Manhattan’s traffic volume.<\/p>\n

For those of you who are bemoaning the\u00a0toasterization\u00a0of the automobile, I’m with you. I want nothing more than to row my own gears and be one with the car. Maybe there’s another way to look at the situation.<\/p>\n

A CarInsurance.com survey revealed<\/span> that 20 percent of respondents would easily cede control to a self-driving vehicle. Odds are that they don’t give a damn about driving and are probably bad at it anyway. That’s great; get them into an autonomous vehicle so they can be chauffeured around. Leave the driving to those who want to do it.<\/p>\n

It’ll be interesting to see how automakers sell the public on self-driving vehicles\u00a0in the coming years. Studies have shown that\u00a0smart phones are more rousing to\u00a0young people than getting a driver’s license.\u00a0<\/span>Will driving, like driving a stick, be a dying art form in the future? We’ll have to wait and see. Unless I get a\u00a0guarantee\u00a0from Audi that the RSQ<\/a> will be built, I’m not that excited. Are you?<\/p>\n

Information source:\u00a0Society of Automobile Engineers\u00a0and CarInsurance.com; photo source: Wikimedia Commons and Ford China.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Growing up, my sister and I passed time\u00a0on family vacations by\u00a0playing road games and pissing each other off.\u00a0One of two things ended\u00a0these non-Hallmark moments in the family Bonneville: someone getting hurt or a driver cutting off my dad. Either way,\u00a0hell\u00a0would break\u00a0loose followed by a palpable silence and the 3.8-liter engine serving as\u00a0background noise.\u00a0If their Pontiac had been autonomous, it would have\u00a0simply braked. Any wrath would have been reserved for us. When it comes to self-driving\u00a0vehicles,\u00a0Pandora’s box is wide open. Manufacturers […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":137,"featured_media":44492,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[58163,43031],"tags":[],"model":[],"acf":[],"modified_by":"JR Ridley","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.automoblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44488"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.automoblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.automoblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.automoblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/137"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.automoblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44488"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.automoblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44488\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.automoblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44492"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.automoblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44488"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.automoblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44488"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.automoblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44488"},{"taxonomy":"model","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.automoblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/model?post=44488"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}