Smart cars

 

 

Traffic is a mess.  Cars crash into each other, and the highway is backed up for miles.  Construction.  Lane closures.  Cars speeding by on the shoulder to merge in front of as many others as they can.  Cars pulling out onto the shoulder to block.  It’s a contest.  Too sleepy to drive.  Too distracted.  Too angry.  Too intoxicated.  Too big a hurry.  When it all goes wrong, traffic doesn’t work for anybody.  It just stops.

 

Our adaptive cruise will set a gap to the car in front and maintain a safe distance, but it’s totally self-centered.  It will keep us from rear-ending the car in front, but it only does what’s best for itself.  There is no setting for courtesy.  If you can see a car on the ramp that needs to merge into traffic, or one in the next lane that needs to merge over to make an exit or get around a slowpoke, your car doesn’t see it; there is no allowance for that.  Courtesy requires an override by the driver; it’s not the default.  Not a big deal, but not a complete driving solution either.  Cars are getting smarter, but they’re still dumb.  They only know about themselves.

 

But watching the mess we drivers can make of things, I imagine how much better it could be, and probably will be before long.  Cars will get smarter.  They’ll get more aware of each other and start to cooperate; drive with each other instead of against each other.  We’ll stop running into each other and traffic will smooth out.  The slow cars will speed up.  The fast cars will slow down.  We’ll all end up getting there in better time.  Traffic could just flow at a maximum safe speed, whatever that is for the conditions.  Just imagine.

 

Of course, we’ll miss the competitive aspect of driving.  No more “beating” the other guy.  We’ll just all get there faster.  A sacrifice to be sure, but maybe the change will happen gradually enough that we won’t even notice.  We’ll just all benefit.  Just imagine.