Have you seen the recent Mercedes automobile commercials on television?
You know the ads I’m talking about. The ones that show drivers – and I use that word loosely – praising the Mercedes on-board systems for saving the life and limb of some poor, unsuspecting soul when they – the so-called driver weren’t paying proper attention.
“I didn’t see them!” they exclaim.
Well, if you’d have been paying attention then maybe you would have seen them.
I’m torn. On the one hand, as a technologist, I applaud the engineers for the incredible systems they’re building. I don’t think we’re all that far away from seeing self-driving automobiles. Have you seen Google’s? On the other hand, as an invisible motorcyclist dodging drivers inattentiveness and errors every day, I know all about how each and every auto feature that distracts from the task at hand does exactly that. (And sometimes the feature doesn’t even need to be part of the car. I’m thinking of the guy I saw in the minivan last year, in rush-hour highway traffic, with a laptop (!) balanced on the steering wheel, tapping away, oblivious. I throttled up, risking a ticket, and put the dope well behind me.)
I’m thinking that I might one day put on my Mercedes-buying clothes and stroll into a dealership, posing as a potential buyer, and learn firsthand about how they market this stuff.
What we really need is to go back to the days of crank start and manual spark advance. That will automatically eliminate all the idiots from being on the road, except aboard buses, where they’re far less dangerous!
Worm-gear rear-ends, which top out at about 25-28 mph, but can climb walls, would also help!