You might have heard about the driverless or automated car technology currently being developed by automobile manufacturers. Some of this technology is already available in vehicles found in dealers’ showrooms and even on the road.
This includes driver assistance systems like Obstacle Warning that warns drivers of something in the road ahead, or Lane Departure Warning alerting you when you wander out of your lane. Side detection cameras tell you if there is another vehicle in your blind spot. Vehicle-to-Infrastructure systems would warn drivers when there was a stop light or red traffic light that must be heeded.
Even though the experts predict truly "smart" cars will not be here for about a decade, my dad had a smart car about 40 years earlier. His eyesight was failing due to glaucoma. However, he still needed to drive to the doctors, grocery store and so forth and public transportation was not available. His wife and my stepmother, Hilda, had good eyesight, but could not drive. She also was what you would term a good back seat driver.
Therefore, my dad would drive with his blurry eyesight steering by using the throttle and brake, and turn signals. Hilda would tell him to stop at a stop sign or red traffic light, go when it was green, warn him when he was wandering out of lane, when to turn without hitting a curb, tell him about speed limits or if there was a parked car or someone on a bicycle ahead. Fortunately, their trips were only a few miles and in light traffic. At the time I thought it was very dangerous and, of course, it was highly illegal.
Hilda did all these functions provided by automated vehicle technology. Her eyes worked like the cameras, radars and other sensors in these smart cars. Her brain served as the computer that is a key part of Self Driving Cars. When they reached their destination, always safely, she would guide my dad into a parking space, just like Parking Assist systems already available on many vehicles.
Relooking at this situation in light of Self Driving cars tells me that it probably was not all that unsafe. More important, it gives me confidence that the technology will let seniors drive safely longer even when their eyesight and other faculties decrease.
Autonomous driving technologies will appear in stages, with partially automated driving possible from 2016, highly autonomous systems available from 2020, and fully autonomous systems appearing in vehicles from 2025. My dad had many of these capabilities in his 1975 Chrysler – it was called Hilda.