Auto Tech: Ford Autonomous Driving

Ford Autonomous Driving. Click image to enlarge

So if that’s an off-putting legal minefield, imagine how difficult it will be when cars start talking to each other, and driving themselves. Every major manufacturer is working on an autonomous car, and Ford is no different. There are even some completing test runs on the roads as we speak. In a pre-Detroit gab-fest, Ford presented us with an autonomous Fusion, complete with lidar (a remote sensing technology that measures distance by illuminating a target with a laser and analyzing the reflected light) scanners and radars and other techno gadgets designed to keep it from driving into the crowd of a hundred odd automotive journalists.

The Fusion’s lidar scanners and guidance systems were plugged into the monitor and projected onto a large screen so we could all see what the systems produced. It was impressive to see individual arms shooting into the air in real time, all rendered via the Fusion’s lidar “eyes” and computer systems.

The fact of the matter is, autonomous cars could easily be in the mainstream within a decade, the ability for cars to operate on their own is there, the ability for cars to avoid crashes is there, hell, cars can even speak to each other to let each other know what they’re doing (though hopefully not to tell the other cars what their occupants are doing…) as they tootle along. So where is my crash-proof car already?

For that you need to answer a raft of questions, but some of the bigger ones include:
1. Will people actually want to buy one? Some humans like to control things, play with things, use things – but some humans like to sit back and do other things while in transit – which group is larger?
2. What happens if one crashes – who pays the insurance bill? Anyone remember Toyota’s cruise-control court case?
3. Is it even legal? Our whole system of road and traffic laws is built on the assumption a human is in control/not adequately in control of a car – if the car is autonomous, does that mean we can all drink-drive like it’s 1968 again?

It is questions like that which will shape how quickly, or if ever, we’ll get crash-proof cars on the roads – we have the technology.