Quite one thing, the first test car that I don’t control myself. But the demonstration ride by a Matineus Hamburg full of traffic lights, crossing people and winding cyclists is going smoothly. The gentleman who is behind the wheel for safety to be able to intervene in an emergency does not have to move a finger, Knapknapap. You had not better executed the sometimes sudden braking and steering interventions of the car. The city is the city, one pot of panic football.
Who would have thought that, an autonomous driving VW? Did Europe not go far behind the development of self -driving cars? VW took the flight forward with the Israeli Mobileye, developer of Zelfrijtech. An existing electric VW van was converted by VW’s Tech Daughter Moia- a refined sub-car company- with thirteen cameras, nine Lidar and five radar sensors into an autonomous taxi. It is then called Id Buzz Ad, from Autonomous Driving. For non-intimi: Lidar is a kind of laser radar that scans the environment extremely accurately, indispensable component of the self-driving car.
Nice. But the cliffhanger of the experience is how you blindly trust experimental high -tech that you will drag through a metropolis without a human intervention. I get it. The citizen caught in his online spider web craves for adventure, for the unthinkable. That is, I guess, the secret urge behind the innovation fever, that hunts for the Grail. The hope of a miracle, although it drags you even deeper into the matrix, even if it gets you dead. Calculate that everyone with Musk wants to go to Mars. Tredmolen off, the dark in – but just free. The flirt with groundbreaking technology is utopian and suicidal, file for thinkers. Unfortunately, they are just as drifting as we do. Nobody has control. That is really about that. That we can let Tech find all roads, except the road we have lost.
What a time. Tesla and other ambitious manufacturers started to announce independently driving cars for ten years. Only they didn’t come. Musk promised golden mountains to no one anymore believed him. A wiki page is even dedicated to his broken vows, laughing.
It’s not nothing either. The self -driving car is intellectual top sport. He must know all the roads, be able to recognize and avoid every obstacle super fast, see the difference between a cardboard box and a concrete block, every road removal and highway demo on his retina. His observation instruments must function as flawlessly in fog and snow as on windless summer days.
The autonomous evolution process extends from Level 0 to Level 5. Zero stands for zero assistance systems, five for completely independent driving in a car without steering and pedals. In practice, no car manufacturer, despite reckless promises, got beyond level 2, a little yourself steering and braking for vehicles in front. The driver must grab the steering wheel every ten seconds to prove that he is still there. The manufacturers can boom much more, but governments can be thwarted with laws and practical objections.
Safer option
Now the light is going on green in more and more countries. In May I saw which flight took autonomous driving in the US. In San Francisco and Los Angeles, hundreds of perfectly functioning autonomous taxis from Techbedrijf Waymo drive around, renewed electric jaguars. Incidents occur, but in the long term, autonomous driving is the safer option. That is why manufacturers make it so piously human -loving about it. The market potential for sub-car-like autonomous transport is enormous.
That is why this mini ride was perhaps one of the most important in my car life. In the long term, your private car will also be the Bob-and do you still want it if you apple an autonomous taxi for less and for less money? The social consequences can be enormous, for good and for evil. More boredom, more stamping screen time on the smartphone. Dramatic loss of income for the government due to the loss of fine income, because of course, Mobileye does not do, safety for everything. Then the greatest, chronically underrated risk: a loss of human skills that make the helpless person again more dependent on a few tech giants. The new person needs less and less. He becomes a playing field and a finishing place of the technology that he himself created. His latest skills: coaching, tapping and twittering. From that future I stare out the window of the Buzz Ad to the peaceful office and cafés of Buzzing Hamburg. And think: Lord, why did you leave us?