Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

Self-driving cars are almost here. They are safer than human drivers. They aren’t perfect, but they are better. Nevertheless, we might repeat our past and not employ less-than-perfect computer systems. Maybe, however, our younger generations may accept it this time.

Google has been working on self-driving cars. Others have as well. Those involved have done impressive things. There has also been work on road train cars. This is where one vehicle has a human driver in front of a line of vehicles. Computers in all the vehicles communicate so that the following vehicles are driven by computer.

I love this stuff. What I really like is that these ideas produce vehicle that are safer. There are fewer accidents with these things than with our traditional way of driving. There is no great secret as to why these computer-controlled or computer-following (or whatever noun and adjectives we use) cars are safer. They go slow and stay in their lane.

Patience is safer and makes the roadway safer and faster for everyone.

Okay, so let’s all jump into this computer-controlled driving thing. It is better than what we have now.

First, however, let’s go back in time.  In the 1980s, “expert systems” were all the rage. These were computer programs that used databases of information to diagnose situations and recommend courses of action. Some of these were aimed at the medical field. Given a patient’s symptoms, the computer programs performed better than human doctors.

The computer program didn’t suffer fatigue like the human, so it performed better.

And we didn’t use these better-performing programs.

Why not? They were not 100% correct. The software was 90% correct while the humans were 70% correct. Medical service providers did not want to employ something that they knew was not 100%. That left them open to lawsuits. Somehow, using less-accurate humans did not leave them open to lawsuits.

Now we have these computer-assisted cars that are safer than humans, but are not 1oo%. Will anyone employ a less-than-perfect system and leave themselves open to legal action? What happens when we have accidents and people die on the road? Just because we have fewer accidents won’t matter.

Or will it?

My hope is the young people of America. They grew up with less-than-perfect computer games and computer social networks and computer cameras and computer education and computer this and that and the other thing too. Of course the computer is not perfect. Everyone knows that, or at least everyone under a certain age knows and has lived that. They might accept better but not perfect from the computer systems in cars. I hope so.