The largest hurtle standing in the way of the self driving cars is not the ability to park, navigate icy roads, or main its cool in rush hour traffic, rather the largest hurtle to self driving cars is popular acceptance. At our core, humans don’t believe that a computer is ready to be responsible for our lives. This view has been drilled into us, by Window crashes, and the fact that rumba just keeps getting stuck under the couch.
This week, Toyoda announced a step toward autonomous cars but in a human friendly way. Toyoda is installing ECG sensors in the steering wheels that can detect if you are having a heart attack. In such a case the car will use cameras and millimeter-wave radar to detect possible crashes, and take control of the steering wheel as needed.
This is quite clever. Had they announced that the cars use radar and cameras to drive themselves, the public would never accept it. Instead, they presented this as: in the event of a heart attack, we will keep you from dying in a car wreck. Who among us can argue with that?
Personally this announcement makes me happy, as it is one more foot in the door toward full autonomous cars whether we trust them or not.
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