I have mixed feelings about the message from today’s speaker at INFUSION, a monthly lunch I host at the Berkeley Rep for the East Bay tech community. Anthony Levandowski is creator and ardent promoter of the self-driving car, which is being developed at Google. The inventor claims that a self-driving car will be the most important achievement of technology in this century because it will reduce accidents, reduce traffic congestion on our freeways, and liberate drivers from hours of time wasted commuting, when they could be doing things like watching TV (!) or whatever else they do when not driving.
Levandowski — who created an “autonomous” motorcycle earlier in his career and who founded The 510 System, a company providing real-time maps of sites for surveyors, among others — says that developing a working model of the self-driving car will take another three years, although Google has tested such a driverless car to fetch pizza in San Francisco…with the escort of 19 police cars, more than accompany a Presidential motorcade. Levandowski says complex technical issues need to be resolved to build this car, but an even greater obstacle is changing the popular culture of driving.
Pointing to his four-month old son, whose mom, tech writer Stefanie Olson, brought him to the talk, Levandowski said, “I hope he never has to learn to drive.” That’s a revolutionary change in cultural memes.
I agree about not learning to drive, but why have cars at all? Why not provide better public transportation? In New York City, many people don’t drive or have a driver’s license because there’s no need for a car. It seems to me it would be far simpler to provide more buses, ferries, trains, and free bicycles than create yet another version of the automobile. For me, a car is a car is a car, no matter who does or doesn’t drive it.