There are a whole trunkful of copywriters and art directors who, at any given hour of any given day, are working on car accounts. It's their job to put into words and pictures the experience of driving whichever car model their client makes. If your client makes a fun, sporty performance car, it makes your job easier. If they make a minivan, well, it makes your job a paycheck.
Not that there's anything wrong with that.
But minivan or sports car, the point is it's meant to be driven.
I'm talking about the thrill of driving. Where you feel the feedback from the road through your hands on the wheel. Where your tires stick like Krazy Glue while you’re taking a curved on-ramp at 70mph. And ride like you’re on rails in the straightaways. That never-get-tired-of-it feeling of being slammed back in your seat as you hit the gas and accelerate past some rustbucket doing nothing but standing between you and where you want to go.
You know, the experience of driving. You know that experience? Well forget it.
From Google to Mercedes to GM, everyone is jumping on the new automotive fad of a car that drives itself bandwagon.
To which I say, what’s the point? (I say that to a lot of things, but this – really?)
Isn’t the definition of driving to drive? Not to wax too poetic, but no one wants to be the ballerina that never dances. The thoroughbred that never races. The swimmer that’s never sliced through the water. Alright, so analogies aren't my strong suit. But you see where I'm going.
This is one I really don’t get. I mean, I understand the appeal of driving my car into a parking garage, then getting out and letting it find it’s own parking space while I go off to Five Guys. I mean the gym. But then, I don’t get the full parking experience, an essential adjunct to the driving experience.
Taking refuge behind the cause of "safety," some cities are now installing roadside sensors for cars that drive themselves to follow. This is very reassuring. These cities can’t even repair potholes.
The picture above is a Mercedes prototype called the FO15. It drives itself, although there’s a steering wheel should you become overwhelmed with nostalgia or the urge to shut off the auto-pilot and drive yourself.
This other picture is the inside of the F015. Apparently carmakers believe if you don’t have to worry about driving, you’ll spend your commute time more productively by working on the way to and from the job.
I barely work at work. I don’t see it happening.
There’s a bigger story here about technology for its own sake, and questions that need to be asked. For example, just because we can do something, should we? Coincidentally the same question I asked about my high school girlfriend.
Because there’s a tangled web of liability questions, routes, judgment calls the car would have to make in a split second, I don’t see the self-driving car as a realistic option for decades, if ever.
But in the unlikely event self-driving cars hit the road sooner rather than later, I’d have to tell it the same thing I tell my kids.
If you can drive yourself, you can pay for your own gas and insurance.
