As I gripped the steering wheel of my usually steady vehicle, and watched it slide ever so gracefully into the oncoming lane while attempting a simple right-hand turn in my neighbourhood street at a pokey 16 km/h, I was transfixed with a few questions. Fortunately for me, no other vehicle was within shouting distance, so my SUV’s random wandering into the undesignated lane, went unnoticed and unreported. It was Dec. 27 or 28 and Estevan was just digging out from several feet of snow and it was every driver’s duty to not only pay attention to their own skill-testing driving skills, but those of the other motorists they were encountering along the way, no matter which way we were heading.
We do the Saskatchewan shuffle with our feet when crossing icy intersections on foot. We need to do something similar while driving.
The thought that struck me, was, what would an autonomous vehicle do under similar circumstances? Would I be tempted to grab that steering wheel of the driverless car once I felt the tires lose their grip? Would the driverless vehicle’s sensors catch this development and automatically reduce speed from 16 km/h to 8 km/h and self-correct?
I keep hearing how the driverless car experiments are going wonderfully well … in California. I need to know how they’re doing in Saskatchewan with five-foot snow banks and blizzards maybe hampering the senors and satellite signals that these vehicles carry.
How do they cope with an Estevan King Street configuration where you need to turn left on a two-lane street into a 3.5 lane street with ice ruts? What makes the choice?
Now don’t get me wrong, this is not a critique on local street cleaning and configurations, it’s a question about driverless cars, and, I presume, semi-trucks.
Local snow clearing efforts have been near heroic in style and efficiency. We haven’t fielded one complaint yet about snow clearing in the middle of some very trying circumstances.
Nope, this is about autonomous autos and how they might react to what we’ve been dealing with for the past 35 days and which we now consider to be general driving conditions which will be with us until March, I presume.
Do these driverless vehicles know when to touch brakes and when to hit the brakes and when to pump the brakes and when to just steer into the skid and hope the car comes to a skidding stop having completed a 360 degree cycle or a figure eight?
Do these driverless vehicles make the right decisions approaching a green light that then turns amber as you approach the icy intersection at 30 km/h? This requires instant decision-making. Do you run the amber light and hope it doesn’t turn red before you cross the intersection? Do you proceed through amber and hope the other drivers stopped at the intersection acknowledge and react positively to your dilemma? Do they see your dilemma at all? Will the autonomous vehicle’s sensors know that the other drivers (in non-driverless cars) aren’t paying attention? Do you hit and pump brakes and hope you come to a halt before entering the intersection? Would the driverless car’s sensors make the same decision? Shoot, I don’t know. Maybe they’ll pick up a false signal due to the three-foot snow windrow off to the left!
It might work if all vehicles are driverless, or it could turn chaotic. Especially if the sensors start acting up.
I understand they are now testing driverless vehicles in Pittsburgh, as well as Santa Monica. They expect to encounter some of these questions regarding snow, slips, ice, blizzards, snowdrifts and such.
In the meantime, let us all recall that old Simon and Garfunkle tune, Slip Sliding Away. It too talks about reaching your destination.
Be careful out there. Â Â Â
