Could autonomous vehicles put a stop to bad driving?
We hear a lot about speeding. It is a topic of concern for residents of our towns, villages, hamlets and rural areas alike. We don’t have much traffic congestion, which is a positive, but it means we can drive really fast, and that’s the negative. Vehicle technology doesn’t help matters. Our cars go super fast with barely any pressure on the gas pedal, and they are more and more fuel efficient, too. As we all know, with excessive speed comes noise and safety concerns.
Well, what if advancing technology could stop us from going fast, even from breaking the rules of the road?
Even though we detest speeders, how would we feel if vehicle speed could be controlled using technology?
Autonomous vehicle technology is advancing to the point that vehicles with self-driving capabilities are on the road.
There will come a time, say those in the know, when one may be driving down the road and look over to see a driverless car.
A pilot project to evaluate the use of automated vehicles on Ontario roads was established in 2016 and is now trickling down to the municipal level. Clearview was recently asked to identify roads in an effort to create a “seamless and well coordinated test corridor”.
Something that may seem like old news in Silicon Valley is testing locals. We do like to say we are 100 years behind the times here in Creemore but you’ll notice very few of us drive Model Ts. There are definitely more Teslas than Roadsters up in those there hills.
Like with most technology, we are swept away with it. It’s not so much a choice as a persuasion. So shall be the way with autonomous vehicles. Eventually, as consumers, we will be persuaded to buy what is made available to us, or opt out completely.
Fast forward a decade or so, assuming the pilot project has some success and laws are adopted to accommodate autonomous cars, imagine that speeds could be controlled by the same technology that guides the driverless vehicles, regardless of whether or not there is someone in the car. The result is that no one would be able to go above the speed limit in the village of Creemore, or on Prince of Whales Road. Imagine that a person couldn’t stop their car in a no-stopping zone or that they couldn’t roll through a stop sign or blow though a cross walk.
It is hard to believe that this would be accepted by the driving public but it would solve a lot of problems – problems relating to speed and safety while creating a whole host of other problems, but perhaps not insurmountable as technology advances.
P.S. – Clearview has selected 47 km of township road to connect to county roads as its preferred corridor: Fairgrounds Road, Concession 6 Nottawasaga and Concession 10 Nottawasaga.
