With where Cars are Heading, my Money’s Going in Funeral Homes

May 21st, 2010. By Hunter West

I love to drive—but I just may have to give it up and be done with it. Because I don’t like where the cars of the future are going. 

For that matter, I don’t like where they are now. 

A recent article in The New York Times focused on the cars of the future and what our dashboards are going to look like. Specifically, a demonstration by Cisco Systems showed how an LED dashboard display can be manipulated and customized much like the screen on your smart phone, iPad or laptop. 

In other words, if you don’t like the fuel gauge over HERE, you can drag and drop it over THERE. 

Same with the icons for the car’s web browser, the weather channel, the stocks channel, the news feed, the video screen, the keyboard and the GPS. 

Here’s the problem…  

It’s one thing to have the dashboard evolve from a collection of mechanical dials to integrated electronic bars, and graphs. This gee-whiz stuff has been happening since the 1980’s. 

The problem—and I’ll say it again—is all the interconnectivity that automotive manufacturers have, or are bringing into the car. 

Were cars to have the capacity to drive themselves, then I’d be all for it. Just like the cockpit of an airliner, where you can throw the multi-million-dollar jet on autopilot and play with your laptop while the plane overshoots the airport by an hour… 

Oh, wait a minute. That’s not so good, either. 

The point is, even if cars were to have the kind of sophistication that commercial jets have, there is still some supervision required. Contrary to popular belief, planes cannot fly themselves, even with the most sophisticated equipment on board. There must be a degree of human intervention. 

Plus, it’s not a level playing field. Planes do not have other planes whizzing by them, travelling in the opposite direction three feet apart. And cars do not have the sophistication that planes have now, nor will they. 

So why do automobile manufacturers insist on putting more and more interactive crap into cars that will serve to distract drivers even more than they are now? 

Competition. The other guys are doing it. The Killemall Car Company has satellite TV, so the SayYourPrayers Motorcorp has to better that. Safety? Pishaw. It’s all for sales, baby. Consumers are demanding it. Yes, and consumers are also nuts. 

In a perfect world, only a passenger would use all this stuff—check the stocks, the weather, browse the net. Not the driver. No, the driver would never be tempted to do that while the car was moving… 

Actually, the comments submitted to The New York Times following the publication of the article are interesting. Many suggested putting a transmission lock on all the electric gizmos that are not directly associated with the basic operation of the vehicle. 

If the car is in gear, none of that stuff works. Great idea. 

Others were concerned about the interconnectivity of vehicles. ‘Cars will be connected,’ the gurus say. The capacity for a dealer to send software fixes by remote control though the internet to the car’s electronic brain—rather than having to bring the car in for servicing—would be a breakthrough. 

Of course, this would all be password protected, wouldn’t it? There would be NO WAY a n’er-do-well could hack into the system and, say, switch the brake with the gas pedal… 

One reader thought that was a possibility and it scares her to death. 

Another fellow, who rides a motorcycle, says he can’t believe the ways in which drivers are distracted: smart phones, GPS devices, fiddling with the song selection on their iPod patched into the car’s sound system instead of just being okay with what the radio station is giving you… 

He’s a fan of mass transit. 

So am I. In coming years mass transit will hold more than the promise of a reduced carbon footprint. 

With more people in cars that have a myriad of distractions but without the capacity to drive themselves, the safest place to be if you have to be on the road at all, is a bus. 

Mark my words, when the kids are grown and out of the house and I’m finally put out to pasture, we’re going down to one car. And that car will be used just for driving out of town, during those rare occasions when we need to. 

The rest of the time, friends, I’m taking the bus. 

And I’ll do one more thing. I’ll be making a couple of investments: 

To a law firm, given the spike in lawsuits that will surely follow once these killer cars are on the road. 

And a funeral home. They will be busy. 

Good strategy methinks.

Tags: Automobile, Automotive, Cars, Cisco, LED Dashboard, Smart Car

This was posted on Friday, May 21st, 2010 at 9:15 am and is filed under Accidents, Automotive, Defective Products . Feel free to respond, or trackback. Read our comments policy.