This week's Citizen online poll, courtesy of The Atlantic magazine, asks which current behaviour will be unthinkable 100 years from now?
As of Friday morning, there were 274 responses (the poll will remain open through the long weekend). Handwriting was the top vote getter with 84 votes. Factory farming and manually operating a smartphone were at the bottom with 27 and 34 votes respectively. In the middle of the pack were euthanasia and assisted suicide as illegal with 68 votes and driving your own vehicle, chosen 61 times by 22 per cent of the respondents.
Some people already feel handwriting is a thing of the past. The legalization of assisted suicide is already in progress, due to a Supreme Court decision earlier this year.
The science fiction sounding answer in the bunch seems to be driving your own vehicle yet it could be the one closest to becoming reality. With so many people taking to the highways over the upcoming long weekend, consider the prospect of driverless cars. Never mind 100 years, it could be just 10 years away. The transition could be as fast and jarring as switching from horse and buggy to the first cars was.
Not only does the technology exist, it's already undergoing real-world trials after years of testing and development. Millions are being spent by companies as big as Google and as small as Clearpath Robotics, a Canadian-based company that produces unmanned vehicles for clients in the military, mining and agriculture.
On its website, Clearpath asks: "The future is autonomous. Are you ready?"
Some misleading advertising there because the future is now and this technology doesn't care if people are ready or not. Driverless vehicles have to ability to significantly reduce the number of deaths and injuries on roads. Computers don't drive drunk, they don't fall asleep, they won't get mad at other drivers, they won't speed or drive dangerously and they will do a much better job of driving to road conditions than overconfident and/or inexperience humans.
If this sounds foreign and impossible, think again.
A big part of a flight to Vancouver (or anywhere else) on a passenger plane of any significant size happens with the computer at the controls. There is no technical reason why the computer couldn't also take off and land the plane. Once in Vancouver, hopping on the Canada Line means taking a driverless train downtown. There are no technical reasons why computers couldn't also pilot freight trains.
One day soon, it will be as illegal to drive your own vehicle on a public street as it is to drive a horse and buggy down the middle of a busy highway. Stealing a vehicle will be as stupid as stealing someone's smartphone with its GPS locator engaged. Your vehicle will never get lost, will know the fastest way, will be able to avoid construction and accidents, will be able to automatically seek assistance when in trouble and will quickly know where the parking spot closest to the entrance is.
Off-road driving in forestry, farming, mining and other natural resource development activity would also be safer and more efficient if handled by computers. Besides not needing to rest, on-board computers and sensors would certainly be better judges of changing road and weather conditions.
While this sounds like progress to many people, it could be a nightmare for hundreds of thousands of Canadians in driving jobs, piloting everything from freight and passenger trains to delivery vehicles, taxis and short- and long-haul trucks.
Their disbelief will not slow down its implementation. A union representative for drivers at the Suncor facility in Fort McMurray was quoted recently poo-poohing Suncor's plans to investigate using driverless trucks. Well, they can't be driverless, what if they get stuck, the poor fellow asked.
Two answers.
First, they won't get stuck nearly as often. Second, numerous unmanned vehicles getting themselves unstuck in difficult terrain have already been tested extensively in real-world settings or off-world settings, if you include the two Mars Rovers.
Jobs will be lost, the economy will restructure and people will adapt as driverless vehicles all but eliminate the death and destruction that is a regular occurrence on our streets and highways. Based on past summer long weekends, more tragedy is just around the corner with humans behind the wheel.
Technology is about to get us around those corners and to our destinations more safely.
-- Managing editor Neil Godbout
