Momentum - September 2021 - 2

EDITORIAL
" STAY IN YOUR LANE, " HE SAID
WITH UNJUSTIFIED CYNICISM
I'M THE GUY WHO, BACK IN THE DAY,
expressed what turned out to be a highly
unwarranted amount of dismay at the
manufacturers of cell phones for their
foolish idea of equipping them with
cameras. " Who's going to want to use their
phone to take pictures? " I huffed. " That's
why we have cameras. Stay in your lane! "
So it is not without a healthy dose of
hesitancy that I express a bit of skepticism
about autonomous vehicles. But " stay in
your lane " is an apropos phrase regarding a
certain aspect of AVs that might make them
less user-friendly than is suggested by what
to me seems like excessive hype.
Specifically, I'm talking about how drivers of conventional cars
will be able to take advantage of the very (excessively?) cautious
" nature " wired into AVs. You want to get somewhere fast in a
conventional car? Easy. Cut in front of all the AVs in your way. They
drive like granny and will give way.
This problem, I suspect, will grow larger in proportion to the AV
Patrick Ponticel
MOMENTUM Editor
population growth rate. At some point, AV drivers or passengers
will get fed up with " less intelligent " cars constantly cutting in front
of their sophisticated ones and perhaps taking advantage of them
in other ways yet to be imagined.
Perhaps I've got it all wrong. Perhaps I'm the U.S. Patent Office
Commissioner who in 1899 infamously declared, " Everything that
can be invented, has been invented. " Perhaps engineers in the
mobility-engineering, computer-science, and related businesses are
sufficiently geared up and amped up to level the playing field/road
between smart cars and stupid ones.
I like to think that, at the least, I'm raising a concern about AVs
that seems to be largely absent from the popular discourse. There's
value in that. Perhaps.
Of less doubt in my mind is the ability of today's MOMENTUM
readers to conquer all manner of engineering challenges. I'm
continually astounded by the quality of their minds, as reflected in
the articles they write for this magazine. Check them out, starting
on page 4.
I guess time will tell whether these young and whip-smart
student engineers will prove me as wrong about AVs as I was about
cell phones. If I were a betting man,.... n
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Momentum - September 2021

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