© 2017 Michael Swickard, Ph.D. “Baseball
is like driving, it’s the one who gets home safely that counts.” Tommy Lasorda
This last weekend there was a car accident
which involved a self-driving vehicle. The media had a great visual of this car
on its side. To our way of thinking that is never supposed to happen. It’s a
self-driving car which should be programmed to stay out of accidents.
The good news is that it wasn’t the
self-driving car’s fault. But the car ended up on its side. That is never good.
Seems the car ended up on its side after someone, a human, not another
self-driving car, didn’t yield when it was a yield situation.
Are we to assume self-driving cars
are not going to get into accidents? Of course they will have accidents because
they are out there with all of us humans. Regardless of the fact that
self-driving cars will not be texting or talking to a spouse, the human other
drivers do.
Like Los Angeles Dodgers Manager Tommy
Lasorda observed, it is the one who get home safely that counts both in the
game of baseball and driving. When I took a defensive driving course the mantra
was to arrive safely despite the actions of others. Even if you are a
self-driving car.
Imagine how hard it would be to sit
in a self-driving car as it gets into an accident. What can you say since there
is no one else in the car? In a regularly driven car you might resort to
colorful language for a driver that gets you into an accident but if you are
the only one in the car the best you can say is, “Shuckins!”
Obviously, some statistician can
point out that you will be many times safer if a knucklehead isn’t driving but
there is that media picture of a self-driving car on its side to consider. And
if you think that the self-driving car is doing something wrong, what can you
do other than gasp?
One time I was in a commercial jet
taking off from Dallas when as we were heading onto the runway I noticed that
the pilot had not engaged the flaps. Normally to take off or land the flaps are
extended. Someone traveling with me noticed I was agitated.
I mentioned the flaps to which this
person just shrugged. Then the pilot announced, “Most times we use flaps to
take off but for you pilots there are a few times when we have a no-flaps
takeoff. This is one of those times.” I went whew.
So, it may take a bit of trust to
ride in self-driving cars, especially in traffic with the usual amount of human
knuckleheads. I guess we could get used to it or perhaps some of us never will.
It could be that we can consider what Will Rogers wrote, “When I die, I want to
die like my grandfather who died peacefully in his sleep. Not screaming like
all the passengers in his car.”
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