Self-Driving Cars: AutoPilot Does Not Equal Auto Safety

Todd: Hello this is Todd Tracy with the Tracy Law Firm in Dallas, Texas with another Todd talk.  I want to talk to you about autonomous or driverless vehicles today.  A lot of times people ask me well what is the future of driving in these driverless vehicles.  Well I think we have seen just in the last couple of weeks, here in July 2016, that driverless vehicles, they may be, I think they are going to be a good solution in the future but we are not ready for them any time in the next ten years or so.  The way I look at driverless vehicles and autonomous vehicles, until I can turn my computer on every single day and it not have a computer glitch in it, or my TV remote not have a computer glitch in it, we are not ready for driverless or autonomous vehicles.  Now, there are certainly some technologies that we are seeing with autonomous or driverless vehicles that we have in vehicles today that are excellent safety features.  For example, blind spot detectors.  When you are in your vehicle and you are getting ready to change lanes to the left or to the right, blind spot detection systems are wonderful devices because they incorporate blind spot detection systems with lane departure systems in place.  How do they do that?  They do it with cameras, they do it with a lighting detection system and they do it with sensing systems.  So the technology is there but we are not there yet but you give it 10 years and I think we will be there.

Speaker:  What do you say to people that say well we got planes on autopilot?

Todd:  Planes on autopilot are a completely different environment because you are 35,000 feet or 40,000 feet and you don’t have vehicles right next to you, you don’t have a vehicle that is approaching you that is within feet of you.  You got to remember the way the air traffic control systems work is if you get within 2,500 feet of a vehicle or of an airplane that is when their systems take place.  When you are dealing with automobiles on streets, automobiles on highways, then it is a completely different environment because streets are very narrow, the sky is wide open.

Speaker:  And they are working on driverless trucks now.

Todd:  Well, you know, I mean that is what is really scary to me is because the driverless trucks, you already expected the truck driver; they have mandatory standards with regard to how many miles or how many hours they can work before they go to sleep.  However, you know the systems with regard to you know, trucks, you are dealing with 80,000 pounds of potentially lethal weapons, okay.  And they are not just going to take out one vehicle.  If you an 18 wheeler driver that wrecks because of fatigue or because they are not focusing on the task at hand, they can wipe out about 5, 6, 10 vehicles besides killing themselves.  So I am all for technology, don’t get me wrong but technology and the responsibility of a non-distracted driver, that is the key to technology and driving safety.