E-cars: They’re coming: General Industry Coverage

A recent New York Times article about the growing electric car market brought to mind a heated discussion I got into with one of the dads from my daughter’s Indian Princess group about a decade ago. Let’s call him Jack.

On a slow morning during a weekend outing, Jack predicted that self-driving cars — as in autonomous ones without a steering wheel — would be commonplace in five to 10 years.

Being the sort of person who doesn’t have the filter that others do, I told Jack he was nuts. At that, he informed me that there were already self-driving cars on the road, and he proceeded to educate me about the technological progress being made. Although I agreed with him about the advancements, I only upset him more when I said there was no way that the general public would accept self-driving cars as quickly as he imagined.

To Jack, the matter was strictly about technology. To me, the issue was about self-preservation. As I said then and still say today, I will not get into a car controlled by a computer until all cars on the road are computer-controlled. I just don’t trust other drivers.

Jack told me I was crazy because if I ever had flown on an airplane, I already had entrusted my life to a computer. Sure, planes fly using automatic pilot all the time, but I reminded him that they still have pilots.

Now you might be thinking that there are many self-driving cars on the road today. That’s true, but you still can drive them manually. Big difference. Also, they’re still not commonplace.