I’ve been whining and moaning the past few days about bike/ped/auto infrastructure. Today. I got this pic from one of the beach urchins. It is from the back seat of a SELF-DRIVING car!

I’m not sure how I feel about self-driving cars. Oh, I don’t mean I don’t think my daugher should be riding in one. That’s up to her. Each generation moves on into the future when it comes to technology. My grandparents had to adjust to the switch from traveling on trains and steamships to buying their own automotive vee-hickles and they never really adjusted to flying as a means of travel although they would fly happily enough with their WWII pilot son (my dad) in the little Cessnas he rented by the hour from his friend at the Sault Ste. Siberia municipal airport.

My dad was an expert automotive vee-hickle driver but computers pretty much flummoxed him. Not so much The Commander. I remember back in the 1990s when me and my bro would bug them about getting a computer. It was kind of a contest at first. My brother was a PC guy (in those days, he later switched) and I was (and still am) Mac Mac Mac all the way (er, except for work). We were both advocating for our own platform. Poor mom. But then… I was astounded one day when I faaaared up our big old Mac, the FAMILY computer, and there was an email from MY MOTHER, who hadn’t had email ever before. In other words, she got sick of us bugging her and went out and bought her own computer ALL BY HERSELF!

It was a PC but that was okay. I think she found a guy to help her set it all up and I was happy she took the initiative. In her later years, she had MacBook laptops and an iPhone. She used her iPhone to (among other things) TEXT me! In her last couple years, phone calls were difficult to manage but text worked well.

My dad never did get accustomed to using a computer or even owning one. Or swiping a debit card at the grocery store but that’s a whole ‘nother story (and he was a BANKER who retired AFTER debit cards). I remember him talking about my mother using the “generator”. He would stay OUTSIDE the “generator” room when she was doing that 🤣

I don’t think self-driving cars are the technology hill I will die on. Although I suspect I will be nervous riding in one and might feel like I want to take the controls. Err.. I’m not sure I would even recognize the controls in a self-driving car. But I am nervous if I’m in a car almost anyone else is driving except my kids and (mostly) the GG. I have always loved to drive and am always alert. So we’ll see.

But then again, I spent a bit of time looking at the Waymo site and how they build their database and… We’ll see… This technology might help people like The Commander get around, when she was in relatively good health but couldn’t drive her own car. In any case, Waymo isn’t available on The Planet Ann Arbor yet and probably won’t be for a while.

One remaining question I have is how self-driving cars will deal with inclement weather conditions. Like snow and ice…

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 8th, 2023 at 7:24 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.