Halloween
parties thrown by adults tend to be well-stocked with booze. Being
lubed up with Johnnie Walker is just about the only legitimate
excuse there is for a bunch of thirty- and fortysomethings to dress up
as fictional characters from comic books and sci-fi movies -- but it
makes one thing in particular somewhat complicated. Transportation.
Driving
impaired is just about the stupidest thing a person could do, with the
possible exception of lighting a fart next to a propane tank.
So that option is off the table from the get-go. A taxi or an Uber
might be feasible, but only if the party takes place in a populated
area; Uber has yet to expand into most country settings, and some taxi
services will balk at driving to the outskirts of
East Nowhere to pick up a drooling middle-aged buffoon dressed like
Spider-Man. Sometimes a sober friend can give you a lift, but then
you’re putting them out.
Someone, somewhere, is working on a driverless car. They need to hurry the hell up.
Technology
at its worst makes things more complicated; look no further than social
media, which has turned human interaction into a rage-filled
digital soup. Technology at its best simplifies things, and I can’t
think of anything simpler than climbing into a driverless car after a
third cocktail and saying, “Back to the Batcave, Alfred!” Apparently in
this fantasy my car is named Alfred. And I’m Batman.
Granted,
this technology is still a ways off. There are a few prototypes on the
road, and they’re surprisingly safe, using GPS satellites to
orient themselves and sensing the movements of nearby vehicles. But
this isn’t an ordinary gadget we’re talking about here. It’s not like an
iPhone, which can be released with glitches that can later be fixed
through downloadable patches. iPhone glitches mean
the web browser is wonky. Driverless car glitches mean you’re suddenly
staring through your windshield at a school of fish as your vehicle is
swept toward one of those outsized Tarzan-style waterfalls.
Lesson: Don’t release a driverless car to market if there’s even a 1 percent chance of joyriding along the bottom of a river.
It’s
a shame they’re not quite ready, though, because the applications would
be immediate. The Halloween scenario is a simple example, but
the driverless car isn’t just a friend to the shameless booze hound.
Take
people with medical emergencies. Let’s say a random woman, we’ll call
her “Jennadaniellouise,” sustains an injury in the home while attempting
to hang a portrait of her grandmother riding a horse while dressed as a
Mighty Morphin Power Ranger. (These details are important.)
Jennadaniellouise is standing tippy-toe on a stepladder when she loses
her balance and falls awkwardly, breaking her ankle.
Jennadaniellouise lives alone. No significant other, no kids, no pets,
nothing, just a life-size cardboard cutout of a smiling Piers Morgan.
Jennadaniellouise
has two options -- call for an ambulance, the expense of which would
cut significantly into the funds she’s set aside for
her troublesome gambling addiction, or call a friend. Only she doesn’t
have friends, either. The last of them buggered off when they found out
Jennadaniellouise has an unhealthy obsession with Piers Morgan and a
grandmother who dresses like a Power Ranger.
But
wait! Jennadaniellouise has a driverless car! She also has sleep apnea
and the world’s fourth largest collection of antique cookie tins.
But never mind that now! To the car, Alfred!
Driverless
cars are meant for people like Jennadaniellouise. They’re also meant
for people who take long road trips and have trouble staying
awake; those with physical impairments; and anyone who’s blown through
an intersection because they were distracted by a squirrel. Those are
your bread-and-butter customers, right there.
Purists
may bristle at the lack of control, preferring to take the reigns
themselves. Understandable. But new research shows that autonomy
may not be our safest option. According to a study by the RAND
Corporation, driverless cars would only have to be moderately better
than human drivers before their use would result in thousands of lives
saved. In fact, if they were only 10 percent better than
current drivers, they “could prevent thousands of road fatalities over
the next 15 years and possibly hundreds of thousands of fatalities over
30 years,” the authors wrote. Think of how many more people would show
up to our Halloween parties.
Lesson: No matter how good you think you are at driving, you likely stink.
It’ll
be a few years before that 10 percent threshold is met, and it’s a
shame, because there are a lot of drivers who could benefit from the
technology now -- specifically, each and every maniac who’s on the road
during my daily commute to work. Rather than dodging lane-switchers
jockeying for position, the commute would be an orderly procedure, an
elegant symphony of wheeled, metal containers
quietly gliding along the asphalt like benevolent Star Wars robots. And
when it’s time to return home, I’d no longer have to marshall my
remaining energy to focus on not dying. I could simply program my
coordinates, lay back with eyes closed, and daydream
about who would win in a fight between me and Dracula. (Hint: Not me.)
That’s
the dream -- or one of them, anyway. Another is achieving the perfect
Halloween, and that means finding the right combination of a great
costume and a carefully calibrated buzz. A driverless car would
obviously help with the latter. The former’s a bit tougher, but I’m
thinking next year may finally be the year I suck it up and go as a
horse-riding Power Ranger.
