While cruise control may seem very different from a self-driving car—and it is, technically—the two technologies are on the same page. And even with the most advanced semiautomated technology on the road today, people still need to be prepared to control the car; that is, even if the machine has a stick most of the time, one must be prepared to act immediately when the machine does not know what to do.
What does the handoff mean for motorists? In theory, the car can drive the car in good conditions, and the driver takes over when the machine is in trouble – for example, in a construction zone or in a busy intersection, or when visibility is not good. When the machine is in charge, the theory goes, the driver can be “released from the wheel” and freed from other tasks.
This vision is similar to the change in the job of the bank teller after the advent of the ATM: The machine does the boring work, freeing the person to do things that are interesting or similar to art. But it leaves open questions about whether drivers get paid for longer in the car when the car is self-driving—after all, if the car industry is still paying high operating costs, are autonomous cars really worth the money? t solve problems related to overwork and fatigue.
There is another problem that is very important. Passing the baton is as difficult – perhaps as difficult – to do as well as driving. Remember that the machine gives responsibility to a person in situations that are very difficult: when things are not normal, when there is something in nature that is not prepared to deal with it, when there is a machine problem or an emergency. Things like this are very difficult to be safe. One review of the academic literature found “overwhelming evidence” that driving results in “higher (near-) crashes in more severe cases compared to driving…the reaction time, then, is that almost all drivers crash.”
The problem is even greater because the time the stick passes through is so short: Because of the way a car moves, a person may have a very short window—perhaps as little as a second—in which to understand how the machine is moving. request intervention, assess environmental conditions, and control the vehicle. This small window is why human drivers in slow-moving vehicles are warned to be alert the entire time the vehicle is in motion. Despite the image of people relaxing, sleeping, texting, eating, and being free from the demands of driving, this image has never been realized due to the need for quick and fast texting at today’s standards.
Audible and visual alarms can help people know when help is coming, but the need for control means people still need to be careful. However, a 2015 NHTSA study found that it can sometimes take people 17 seconds to take control after a car warns them to do so — longer than it would take to avoid a crash.
