Little Robot Cars

Have you ever been on the Interstate when the sky took a rain dump? You couldn’t see ten feet in front of yourself.

Meanwhile: SUV’s, cars, and Semi Tractor trailer loads zoomed by at 70 miles per hour straight into, well we don’t know what into because we can’t see it. Driving 70 when visibility is near zero is less like driving and more like putting all your faith in some charlatan faith healer. The sign says 70 and we drive… 75 or so — no matter what. Can I get an Amen here brothers and sisters?

When you come to a green light, how often do you look both ways out of habit for the idiot who ignored the red light on his side? Do you obliviously roll right on through the intersection like you’ve driven through a thousand others while you think about something else like sending another check to Brother Dave’s Power Hour?

We are not so much drivers as sign followers. Slow for curve, watch for speed bump, stop for stop sign, turn left to drive off a cliff.  Opps! You would like to think you would not turn left and fall off a cliff like Toonces the Driving Cat while the audience kills itself in laughter.  If you just follow the signs and do not look, that could be you. Meow. Aaieee! Smash! Tinkle.

At the 1939 World’s Fair in New York City, there was a famous exhibit called the “City of Tomorrow” depicting the year 2000 where little gumdrop shaped, robot driven cars flew across the street-scape in an endless stream. It’s been common to laugh at this exhibit as hopelessly naive. Think again. We are the robots driving those gumdrops.

Brainless robots. Brainless because a little box on the dash has taken over that function. “In point two miles turn right on Hol-i-day Street” says the impersonal box and you prepare to turn right. A machine tells us what to do and we obey. A sign tells us what to do and we obey. We are not the Kings and Queens of the Road: we are its peasants.

I cannot tell a lie, he drove this truck into a cherry tree.

The website Engaget has collected several stories of brainless robots led astray.  Above is the truck that a Swiss driver managed to lodge in a cherry tree.  He followed instructions down a pedestrian walkway and ended up in the branches.  The tree had to be cut down while the driver got a hefty fine, plus an upgrade to his GPS firmware and a fresh copy of Google Maps.  This in lieu of upgrading his own brain.

An ambulance crew attempting to transfer a patient from one hospital to another 12 miles away ended up blindly following their GPS for 200 miles. Eight hours after setting out on their journey, the ambulance finally made it to the appropriate destination. According to United Press International, “the drivers have been told to study their geography and learn to think for themselves.”  The patient survived.  The crew’s self-esteem, though, suffered a painful death.

The solution to all this blind GPS worship is what you would expect, a new sign.

Warning: Aliens from Outer Space do not like your truck.

In the U.K. they now have signs warning drivers to ignore their GPS because of bridges that are too low, lanes that are too narrow, and the killer attack cherry trees lurking around the corner.  Just another sign for us robots to learn in order to gain our Driver’s License.

The authorities are cataloging every obstacle and turning them over to the GPS vendors for inclusion in the next upgrade.  Not only are we robots, we are now road testers for the GPS software companies.  When one of us hits a bridge somewhere, the bureaucrats mark it down and send it off for the next upgrade.

I was stuck in a nasty bit of traffic, recently.  There were two very large industrial fans being moved down the highway and they had come to a section with lots of power lines. Each line had to be gingerly lifted by workers with large poles.  Traffic backed up forever.

It was time for a robotic mind meld. I pulled my Garmin Nuvi out of the pouch, popped it into the mount, and plopped that up on the dash. I then programmed in my destination (about 90 miles away) and let the system calculate a route.  I pressed the detour button.  It thought some more and then recommended that I take the next dirt road.

My travels from Point A to Point B. The white spidery lines are dirt roads. Click on Map for larger view

I may be a robot, but I am not a dummy.  I cycled through the turns one by one before I turned off my brain and followed the commands of the Garmin Goddess. She took me on a heck of a ride, too.

The hundreds of square miles of pine forests around Waycross, GA are criss-crossed with sandy dirt roads. Happily, roads that are very well maintained.  I rode across these pine barrens with no idea where I was.  Parked at random places were road scrapers — a sign that you are so far from anywhere that it would be a pain to drive this heavy equipment back to the garage. I drove though intersections with rude wooden signs proclaiming names like Sweat Farm Road, Eight Mile Post Road, and O.E. McDonald Farm Road.  Who knew that Old McDonald had a middle initial?

I was so charmed by my scenic route that I pulled out my cell phone, drove with my knees and snapped off a shot of the road while driving around 40 mph. Don’t try this at home: trained red-neck is at the wheel.  As you can see, it’s just sand, pine trees, and brush.  A picture of General Coffee’s original pioneer road across the trackless pines of South Georgia looked pretty much like this except it had no ditches and there were wheel ruts. No road scrapers.

A typical South Georgia sand and clay road. Click for Larger Image

I came out on a two lane black-top called the “Cogdale Road” a few miles outside of Waycross.  As far as I know, all those other robot vehicles sat docilely in line waiting for the caravan to jolt its way forward.  Maybe they didn’t have GPS or maybe they were just happy to have an excuse to be late for wherever it was they were driving, or maybe they were ignoring the call of adventure.

I was elated after my detour. Almost happy enough to forget about the dead ends I’ve been led to, the Subway® Shop that didn’t exist, and the time it tried to kill me by suggesting I turn the wrong way into a one way street.

Here me now, fellow robots, resist the GPS box. It will, more often than not, lead you to the dark side.

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Tagged as: Computers, Traffic