Are drivers becoming obsolete?

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DRIVER'S SIDE DIATRIBE
By Al Vinikour  

Quick quiz: what’s the first thing you couldn’t wait to do on your 16th birthday? Let me rephrase that question. What’s the SECOND thing you couldn’t wait to do on your 16th birthday? In case it’s been so many centuries ago like mine I’ll refresh your memory; get your driver’s license.


Golly, Bob Howdy, having a license meant the end of having to be nice to your parents so they’d take you places or to be nice to peers you couldn’t stand because they were able to drive and you weren’t. Only slight problem with that parent-deal is you may now be able to drive…but what are you going to drive? This isn’t the theme of this diatribe…as Al Pacino said in “Scent of a Woman, “ “I’m just getting warmed up.”


Obtaining a driver’s license is the first step in what is usually the life-long development of being an expert wheelman. Like anything else from serial killing to operating a punch press, time generally hones one’s skills.

Do you think that Bandit, the Burt Reynolds character in those doctoral-theses motivated films, learned how to drive his way out of law-defying situations within a year of learning how to drive? It’s been since civilization went directly from riding burros to piloting K-Cars around the nation. But a scenario has been slowly creeping up that may change the way we transport ourselves.

Technology has developed at almost a supersonic clip and applying those attributes to cars and trucks has been one of the major venues. There are now systems that will automatically move you back in your lane if you start to veer too far over the line; there are systems that can detect if you’re becoming drowsy and will chime you awake and flash a warning on the instrument cluster that says, “Get your ass to a coffee shop” or something similar to that; some that will parallel park FOR you; there are other systems that will warn you if a pedestrian comes too close to your blind spot or there’s cross-traffic headed towards your vehicle or even slow you down when you get too close to the vehicle in front of you if you’re driving on the freeway using cruise control.

I know what you’re  thinking, “Al, what are they trying to accomplish with all this? Are they trying to say that at some point as quickly as they can reach it, drivers will be obsolete?” As usual I’ll quote the late-Isaac Hayes, “You dammmmnnnn right!”

Just like the aviation industry has now developed aircraft that can be flown pilotless by remote control, so, too, will the auto industry someday have the technological wherewithal to program a vehicle to drive by itself in perfect safety without ever having to worry about some drunk, an idiot on his/her cell phone or a druggie who just stole a car running in to you.

Preliminary work has been going on for years. A decade or two ago there was an automated stretch of freeway between Los Angele and San Diego that allowed the vehicle to be driven electronically without ever having the driver interfere with it. I don’t recall the distance but I think it was a relatively short one. That doesn’t matter, however.

It showed that it is possible to be in a car with your Uncle Barney or Grandma Elsie and not have to worry that they’re blind in one eye and have glaucoma in the other; you’ll be perfectly safe. This is the positive aspect.

On the downside, however, think of all the millions of dollars that have been spent trying to educate the public that a particular vehicle is a “Driver’s Car.” What are they going to do now, edit the copy to refer to it as a “Computer’s Car?” Granted, it’s going to be a lifetime or two before every road in America is wired for this kind of transportation but it appears this is coming.

Realistically it will probably take longer than touted because I vividly remember when I was a young Hoosier growing up in the 50s (let’s be honest about something; do Hoosiers REALLY ever grow up?) we were always told that by the time we became adults there would be flying cars, everybody would have a helicopter or a jet pack and the most important thing of all, if you hide under your desk in your school room you can easily survive an atomic bombing.

If, and when this ever happens, driving skills will be totally non-existent, having atrophied from non-use. Would you trust a heart surgeon who has been on a sabbatical for the last 40 years doing crossword puzzles and watching reruns of Jeopardy to perform an emergency quintuple bypass? Certainly not, but you may be forced to ride shotgun with your Uncle Lou in his 27-year-old Honda as he races to Toledo to catch the opening of the new casino and the automated lane is down for repairs.

There already conveyances that allow everyone in the vehicle to ride along and not have to drive, look out for errant drivers or even look for street signs; they’re called buses.