Ghost
Drivers!
I've
been thinking a lot about self driving vehicles recently. They are
going to change society greatly. But recently it occurred to me that
they may create a new kind of problem for law enforcement: The Ghost
Driver!
This
could happen today.
You
can buy a car with cruise control to keep your speed constant. You
can buy car with a collision avoidance system so that even if you are
reading a book it will not hit other cars. And, you can buy a car
with automatic lane following. It keeps you in your lane even if you
are inattentive and start to drift across lanes. (Collision avoidance
and lane control seem to me to be the "Texting Driver"
package.) Yes, the lane following systems available require you to
keep you hands on the steering wheel. But, an article on Slashdot
points out that taping a soda can to the steering wheel will fool one
system into thinking you are holding on.
That
all means that right now you can buy a car, that with the help of a
can of coke and some duct tape, will let you read a book as your car
drives down the Interstate.
I
was wondering if any of these cars can tell if the driver has died,
or even passed out? You hear about that every so often. A driver has
a massive stroke or heart attack, or just gets shit faced drunk and
passes out while driving along the Interstate. This usually results
in the car going out of control and wandering off the road into on
coming traffic, or into other cars close to the no longer functioning
driver.
So,
the drive goes to the happy parking lot in the sky and his automatic
everything car doesn't notice. The car keeps driving. And, driving.
And driving. Finally the car runs out of gas. Do these automated cars
know how to pull over to the side of the road before they run out of
gas? Maybe call for AAA or OnStar for help? I do not know.
The
driver dies and the car keeps going. Say he has gas to travel 400
miles. The driver dies and 6 or 7 hours later his car comes to a
complete stop in the middle lane of your favorite Interstate. In many
parts of the US he will have crossed one, two, or even three state
lines as he drives while dead. Here in central Texas he may well
still be in Texas when the car stops, but not necessarily.
Just
a quick question, is driving while dead illegal?
The
cops get a call that a car has "just stopped" on the
Interstate. The poor police get to the scene to find a corpse from
another state strapped into the drivers seat. The first time this
happens, and it will happen, the cops are going to be baffled. How in
the world did he get there? It will get especially bizarre when the
coroner tells the cops how long the poor driver has been dead.
My
bet is that there will be a whole bunch of posts on the Internet
claiming that the dead can drive and that "proves" a whole
bunch of shit that is too weird for even me to imagine. (Didn't
Steven King write a book about a car that killed people?) How is the
manufacturer going to react when people claim the CAR killed
the driver and drove off with him? Will someone claim that the car
had become sentient, had killed its slave master, and was making a
break for freedom? Will the incident be seen as the start of a zombie
apocalypses?
What
happens if the car is just on a highway? It won't slow down as it
approaches every little town. It will not stop for traffic lights.
Well, it might if there is traffic in the intersection. But, will it
understand cross traffic and stay stopped, or will it try to bull its
way through every intersection? How will small town cops respond to a
car traveling at highway speeds blasting through town? Will they get
in the weirdest chase ever with a car that just keeps going, and
going, and going? Will they shoot the driver?
Heaven
help us if they make these cars with sun roofs or any other easy way
to leave them while they a running. (Oh, really.... you never bailed
out of a car through a sun roof? You must have had a very sane
childhood. Betcha' never played car tag either!) If it is easy to
leave the car while it is moving you can count on people stealing
these cars, starting them off on ghost journeys, and bailing from the
sun roof to a nearby pick up. Who knows, maybe organized crime will
adopt this as a way to get rid of bodies. Just make it look like
Ghost Driver.
Good analogy.
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