16 FEB 2017: In the interests of full disclosure on this topic, right up front I will admit to being a total Luddite on autonomous cars: I just don’t get it. Maybe the choice of branding has something to do with it. Branding is important. This industry got it right once before when it decided to forego ‘horseless carriage’ in favor of  ‘automobile’. Now however there has to be something better than the somewhat frightening descriptor of ‘autonomous’. Just consider the dictionary definition:

autonomous, adjective (of a country or region) having self-government, at least to a significant degree: the federation included sixteen autonomous republics. Acting independently or having the freedom to do so:  an autonomous committee of the school board.

I don’t know about your experiences but a sentence beginning, “An autonomous committee of the school board has decided that …” has seldom heralded good news.

Maybe, in fact quite probably, I’m just out of touch with where this techno world is headed.

That said, I am a firm believer that just because the technology exists – doesn’t necessarily dictate that it must be applied.

I like a lot of the gizmos that are appearing in new cars – the ones that warn you if you’re drifting out of your traffic lane, or others that will ‘autonomously’ stop the car when you are about to back over your neighbor’s cat. But the idea of getting into a driverless travel pod and telling some Siri-like, ethereal chauffeur to, “Take me to the office and make it snappy” just doesn’t, dare I say, compute.

The other simple fact is that, like most people I know, I really do enjoy driving. I like driving long distances and having the autonomy to decide how far I can push the speed limit. I really like driving at night. But, I simply do not like being driven by anyone else. No matter how good a driver they might be, I am much happier doing it myself.

My least favorite driving experience is metered taxicabs, particularly in New York City, although Mexico City came a close second. I now prefer to use Uber instead of taxis because their drivers tend to be much more restrained, probably because they’re driving their own vehicles.

In fact it was in an Uber car in NYC that I recently had a fascinating conversation on the subject of ‘driverless’ cars. I asked the very pleasant 30-something driver how he felt about working with a company that was hell-bent on replacing its 1.5 million drivers with robots as soon as humanly possible (maybe not the exact words I used). He nodded ruefully and responded that he gets asked that all the time but that driverless cars will never work in New York, adding “Let me show you why.”

It was a busy weekday morning and we were driving down Seventh Avenue, which is one-way and four lanes wide. “Keep your eyes on the sidewalk ahead. Just watch out for someone hailing a yellow cab and see what happens,” he said.

Sure enough, a few minutes later, about 150 yards ahead, a woman on the left abruptly raised her arm. We were in the next-to-left lane at the time and without warning a yellow cab driver suddenly cut us off as he plunged across three lanes of traffic to get to the woman before another cabbie could beat him out.  My driver had seen it coming. When he saw the woman raise her arm, he immediately slowed down and looked around him anticipating (correctly) that things could get interesting.  “No driverless system would see that arm go up and predict what you just saw happen,” he triumphantly declared. And you know what, he was right.

Uber and Google’s attempts at autonomy have had their problems in the early going.

Even with human observers sitting behind the wheel to monitor their pseudo-driverless operations, Uber – which actually describes itself as ‘a technology company’ – has experienced considerable problems in Pittsburgh and San Francisco. In the latter city (Uber’s home town) the company was asked to suspend its semi-driverless trials after numerous vehicles were caught on camera going through red lights. Google’s driverless technology has also suffered a number of accidents and in several cases blamed the driver for not taking control quickly enough when the system screwed up. Insurance companies have to love this stuff!

Such mishaps are inevitable with new technology – remember the early days of jets and the de Havilland Comet’s disastrous start and over time the huge capital investment being poured into autonomous driving will undoubtedly lead to remarkable things. My ongoing concern however is just how the world of autonomous cars is going to coexist with a planet filled with extremely autonomous drivers, some good, many bad and more than a few downright ugly. As with the New York City example, human drivers can do some pretty crazy and unpredictable things.

So no matter how efficient driverless technology will, I am sure eventually become, short of taking the steering wheels out of all of our hands by way of government mandate that, “As of x date thou shalt no longer drive thyself” the two will have to figure out how to live side by side for potentially a very long time.

My money is on us seeing pilotless commercial flight before we see major changes on our roads and highways. At least in the air lanes we already have clearly defined separation standards between aircraft – try initiating something similar with a New York City taxi driver!