I'll dirve for now
06/06/16 04:42
I remember when my friends began to get GPS devices. They were so proud of this new technology and eager to demonstrate how it could guide them wherever they wanted to go. The map databases, however, weren’t very accurate in the early days. One day a colleague and I were in St. Louis and had a break from our meeting and wanted to go visit the arch. After driving around and around to the directions of his GPS, I finally said, “I can see it. Why don’t we ignore the GPS, turn right at the next intersection and look for a place to park. Fortunately my colleague took no offense and despite the “recalculating” message from his GPS turned right, drove two blocks and parked within easy walking distance of the arch.
Another day that same colleague headed out to find the home of a family who lives in the hills. After he was still missing a half hour after he was supposed to arrive, I received a phone call from him. He was more than twenty miles away from his destination following the GPS that was leading him still farther away.
And I’ll never forget the time my brother-in-law, not exactly a country boy to begin with, headed out with our daughters in his car to run an errand. When he didn’t return to the ranch and was very late, we found out that he had somehow managed to follow his GPS to the wrong side of the river and finally had found his way back by taking a ferry. How he got on the wrong side of the Missouri River without knowing it in the first place was a mystery to me.
The data bases are more accurate these days and I have a GPS unit that I use quite a bit, especially for finding addresses when I travel to cities. It is also helpful when I receive a call from Sheriff’s dispatch. They now expect me to follow my GPS and don’t need to give me directions to the desired destination. Most of the time it works pretty well.
However, the GPS doesn’t know the location of our church camp and think that I’m cutting across roadless country when I drive the two miles from the highway to camp. That road has been there for a long time.
And, every once in a while I’ll be driving down the Interstate on a beautiful day and the display of my GPS unit will show me off to one side of the highway. That one got me to thinking. I think that we may need some of those bugs worked out before I’m going to have a good feeling about driverless cars. I wonder what they would do when the satellite maps say that they have gone off of the road. Would they just stop, confused, in the middle of the Interstate? Or would they try to go offloading all of a sudden while driving at freeway speeds? I know that they rely in part on multiple systems, so presumably when the cameras detected information that was different than the satellite information they would have some way of resolving the conflict.
Which brings to mind another worry about driverless cars. I think they use cameras to keep the car in the proper lane as they drive down the highway. That’s all good and nice this time of year when there is fresh paint on the highway. But most of the year, you can’t see the lines on the roads around here. Give us a few blizzards and a couple of weeks of heavily salted roads and the paint pretty much washes off of the road. If I can’t see the lines, do I think that a camera could keep the car in the right lane?
And, as long as I’m on the subject, I know that complex and carefully drawn up computer algorithms ensure that self-driving cars obey the rules of the road. But do they know the local customs of somewhat less legalistic humans. I know that in Idaho, for example, people often don’t stay in their own lane. Here in Rapid City, people think that a yellow light means speed up, not slow down. In Alberta, a double line is a challenge to a car wanting to pass. Technology can drive the autonomous car according to the rules of the road, but how is is going to deal with people who have a much less rigid adherence to those rules? Just a few days ago I saw a tourist driving the wrong way on one of our one way streets down town. I wonder how the self-driving car would deal with that.
And, of course, we have three major seasons in our part of the world: Winter, the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, and Road Construction. It’s that third season that worries me when it comes to those driverless cars. That is a special problem this year. We’ve got a real display of orange highway cones all over town. I can no longer get to and from the church, regardless of the route I choose, without going by a few of those things. My theory is that the low oil prices have forced a slowdown in the oil fields in North Dakota resulting in an abundance of unemployed orange traffic cones in our neighbor to the north. Some of those extra cones have come south of the border in search of employment and ended up stretched out alongside our highways. At least there are quite a few in areas where there doesn’t appear to be any actual work being done. I’m not sure how those driverless cars are going to deal with detours and lanes that have been changed with orange cones.
I’m hopeful about the technology, however. If they could teach a car to know how deep a pothole is, they’d really have something. I never can tell until it’s too late. Either I slow down too much and annoy my passengers and the cars behind me or I don’t slow down enough and risk my tires and alignment. If there was a car that could deal with potholes, and even miss a few more that I do, I’d be interested in it.
For now, I’m sticking to driving my own car and I’ll leave the driverless cars to others. After all, if they can teach a driverless car to share the road with the likes of me they will have really accomplished something.
Another day that same colleague headed out to find the home of a family who lives in the hills. After he was still missing a half hour after he was supposed to arrive, I received a phone call from him. He was more than twenty miles away from his destination following the GPS that was leading him still farther away.
And I’ll never forget the time my brother-in-law, not exactly a country boy to begin with, headed out with our daughters in his car to run an errand. When he didn’t return to the ranch and was very late, we found out that he had somehow managed to follow his GPS to the wrong side of the river and finally had found his way back by taking a ferry. How he got on the wrong side of the Missouri River without knowing it in the first place was a mystery to me.
The data bases are more accurate these days and I have a GPS unit that I use quite a bit, especially for finding addresses when I travel to cities. It is also helpful when I receive a call from Sheriff’s dispatch. They now expect me to follow my GPS and don’t need to give me directions to the desired destination. Most of the time it works pretty well.
However, the GPS doesn’t know the location of our church camp and think that I’m cutting across roadless country when I drive the two miles from the highway to camp. That road has been there for a long time.
And, every once in a while I’ll be driving down the Interstate on a beautiful day and the display of my GPS unit will show me off to one side of the highway. That one got me to thinking. I think that we may need some of those bugs worked out before I’m going to have a good feeling about driverless cars. I wonder what they would do when the satellite maps say that they have gone off of the road. Would they just stop, confused, in the middle of the Interstate? Or would they try to go offloading all of a sudden while driving at freeway speeds? I know that they rely in part on multiple systems, so presumably when the cameras detected information that was different than the satellite information they would have some way of resolving the conflict.
Which brings to mind another worry about driverless cars. I think they use cameras to keep the car in the proper lane as they drive down the highway. That’s all good and nice this time of year when there is fresh paint on the highway. But most of the year, you can’t see the lines on the roads around here. Give us a few blizzards and a couple of weeks of heavily salted roads and the paint pretty much washes off of the road. If I can’t see the lines, do I think that a camera could keep the car in the right lane?
And, as long as I’m on the subject, I know that complex and carefully drawn up computer algorithms ensure that self-driving cars obey the rules of the road. But do they know the local customs of somewhat less legalistic humans. I know that in Idaho, for example, people often don’t stay in their own lane. Here in Rapid City, people think that a yellow light means speed up, not slow down. In Alberta, a double line is a challenge to a car wanting to pass. Technology can drive the autonomous car according to the rules of the road, but how is is going to deal with people who have a much less rigid adherence to those rules? Just a few days ago I saw a tourist driving the wrong way on one of our one way streets down town. I wonder how the self-driving car would deal with that.
And, of course, we have three major seasons in our part of the world: Winter, the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, and Road Construction. It’s that third season that worries me when it comes to those driverless cars. That is a special problem this year. We’ve got a real display of orange highway cones all over town. I can no longer get to and from the church, regardless of the route I choose, without going by a few of those things. My theory is that the low oil prices have forced a slowdown in the oil fields in North Dakota resulting in an abundance of unemployed orange traffic cones in our neighbor to the north. Some of those extra cones have come south of the border in search of employment and ended up stretched out alongside our highways. At least there are quite a few in areas where there doesn’t appear to be any actual work being done. I’m not sure how those driverless cars are going to deal with detours and lanes that have been changed with orange cones.
I’m hopeful about the technology, however. If they could teach a car to know how deep a pothole is, they’d really have something. I never can tell until it’s too late. Either I slow down too much and annoy my passengers and the cars behind me or I don’t slow down enough and risk my tires and alignment. If there was a car that could deal with potholes, and even miss a few more that I do, I’d be interested in it.
For now, I’m sticking to driving my own car and I’ll leave the driverless cars to others. After all, if they can teach a driverless car to share the road with the likes of me they will have really accomplished something.