Gary Brown: Our cars are finally smarter than us
When did the driver's seat of a car start to feel like the pilot's seat in a jetliner cockpit?
Driving a new car these days is like flying a plane. Well, door-sized holes don't suddenly open up next to a passenger's seat behind you, as it seems to do lately in a real plane. But the technology on the dashboard of a car is starting to look like the instrument panel on an airline instrument panel.
It keeps beeping and lighting up as it monitors things.
"Keep your eyes on the road," a computer message might tell a driver if he glances away long enough to look at a new construction site.
A cockpit used to provide much more information to an alert pilot than a dashboard did to a sometimes-drowsy driver.
Lord help a pilot if he didn't continue to assess the info offered by dials and digital displays. He had to continually adjust rows of knobs, lines of toggle switches, and the handles of his steering wheel or stick. He had to watch for countless warning lights. If he didn't the plane might crash.
The job of a driver was more simple. He had to steer the car with both hands on the steering wheel at 10 and 2 o'clock, although most of us realized over the year that one hand will do and we can use the other one to eat french fries or drink a beverage. He needed to keep his eyes watching either his speed gauge or ahead for police cars so he didn't get pulled over for a ticket. And, he needed to glance every now and then at his fuel gauge, because if he didn't sooner or later he wouldn't, technically, be driving, he's be gliding.
When you look back at it, the hardest part of driving was making sure you didn't spill your coffee on the floor after you set it on the top of the dash so you could open the road map when you got lost.
Looking at the dials and displays
You don't need a road map these days. Your "navigation system" directs you wherever you want to go.
We don't even have to figure out when it is we get there.
"Arriving at destination."
It gives us an answer to a child's favorite travel question: "Are we there yet?"
"We'll be there when the car tells us we're there."
And we don't need to keep readjusting the radio, as we once were required when AM or FM stations faded out or in as we traveled the highways on long trips. Satellite radio follows us wherever we go. The news or sports talk might not be any better than the old days, but the static is gone and we have our choice of music styles.
We don't need keys to open or start our cars anymore, we just need a fobs in our pockets or purses. Once we're in the car, we don't have to argue about the temperature because we all have our own "climate" controls.
There also is an "app" on a "multimedia panel" that turns our car into telephones that we can "dial" from our steering wheels. Our cell phone/cars are sort of carrying us in their pocket, instead of the other way around.
So many safety sensors
Apparently, we don't even need to keep our eyes on the road now because our cars have sensors such as "blind spot detection" and "lane change assist" and "rear cross traffic alert." Our new cars combine rear vision cameras with front view monitors. We could look out of the "moon roof" on the top, I suppose, and look at the clouds.
The "lane departure" warnings keep us going straight and "pre collision braking systems" make sure we don't keep going forward too far and ram into a car stopped in front of us.
Then, when that car ahead of us moves on, if we don't, our cars are smart enough to sense that and tell us with a visible and audible alert. We no longer need a loved one to be sitting next us us when we're daydreaming and telling us, sarcastically, "you know a green light means go, right?"
And, the technology doesn't stop when we reach the driveway or parking lot that was our destination.
We even have a "reminder" warning message advising us to "look in rear seat" so we don't leave a child or pet behind when we exit the car.
I think that's a great safety alert so no young person or pet gets injured by being left in a car on a hot day.
But, the fact that we need the warning might be a "reminder" to us that, as a species, we apparently aren't really bright enough to be driving.
Reach Gary at gary.brown.rep@gmail.com. On Twitter: @gbrownREP.
This article originally appeared on The Alliance Review: Gary Brown: Our cars are finally smarter than us
