All this talk of the driverless car of the future is fine and dandy. But, come now, do you really think such a thing can work in South Africa? Multiple studies, surveys and reports name South Africa as the most hostile, dangerous and downright difficult place to drive globally.
Of course, that won’t stop the finest geeks employed by richest carmakers in the world from fiddling on their laptops and continuing to play with big radio-controlled cars. However, computer whiz-kids probably got that way because they were never good with people. And that, bizarrely, is exactly why the driverless car will never work.
DRIVELESS CAR
Anyone who interacts with real people on a daily basis knows that subtle expressions and body language all form a vital part of communication. These gestures and emotional signals often speak as loud as actual words. Believe it or not, the same applies to people in their cars.
Take a hand wave, finger point, head nod or something as subtle as eye contact through the rearview mirror. It all forms part of the vital communication taking place on our roads every single kilometre of a journey. Stuff like: “Yes, you can go. Thanks for letting me in. No, I’m choosing not to see you so you cannot move in front of me.”
REMOVE ONE OF THE HUMANS
Now, what happens if you suddenly remove one of the humans from this conversation? Well, even the simplest traffic interaction breaks down. Take, for example, a pedestrian crossing. If a driverless car is stationary, waiting for you to cross, how can you trust it’s actually seen you? How well is it programmed? Can you take your sweet time to cross? Or will it drive at you given a long enough wait time?
And let’s not even get into the fact that pedestrian and traffic behavior is region specific. Etiquette is decent enough in Cape Town, but you randomly wander into the road in downtown Joburg CBD and see how long you survive. An algorithm that works for Newlands is not going to work in Newtown.
TRAINING THE DRIVERLESS CAR
The only way anyone is going to know what a driverless car is actually doing is if it’s emblazoned with lights and signals. Speakers will bleep at pedestrians looking at their smartphones and it’s going to look and sound like a mobile slot machine at a casino.
Interestingly, Mercedes-Benz is working on such a thing – called the Cooperative Concept Car. And the boffins have modelled many of its mannerisms on domesticated animals. No joke, they reckon the way your cat or dog moves its ears to show where its attention is, is the most natural way for a driverless car.
NO DRIVERLESS CAR FOR A WHILE
Nevertheless, let us humans celebrate this rare win over Artificial Intellgence. Because even with all the finest radars, sensors, cameras and machine learning AI in the world, the driverless car is still nowhere in sight. Experts say it will take decades to teach a computer what us human beings who drive regularly find second nature. Bravo, human!
