999 Emergency

I was on holiday recently in Cornwall relaxing in The Seven Bays area. This area of coastline is between Newquay and Padstow. There are seven spectacular bays all close to each other and excellent for surfing, body boarding and great scenery for walkers

For driverless car developers the mixture of small roads, cars parked all over the place and people wandering around with surf boards and beach stuff would be a good testing environment. Whilst relaxing at Constantine Bay I was passed a few times by lifeguards driving a small 4×4 Suzuki Jimny and wondered if their life would be made any easier with a driverless car

In a job where every second counts a driverless 4×4 would be a big bonus for lifeguards. It would enable them to get to incidents more quickly whilst allowing them to also keep sight and focus on the person/s who are in difficulty that they are racing to assist instead of concentrating on driving and avoiding holiday makers on the beach .

Also, if the injured person/s needed to be rushed ashore the driverless rescue 4×4 would do this faster enabling lifeguards to concentrate on continuing medical support without needing to stop and drive the car back.

In addition, the lifeguards driverless 4×4 would have fitted a set of all seeing cameras that could be utilised whilst on the beach to look out for emergencies and alert the lifeguard sooner. As I said every second counts.

So, what about similar emergency vehicles?

I recall James May on Top Gear once raced a new Land Rover Discovery against a driverless military 4×4 vehicle to see who could be first to the top of a massive hill driving through all sorts of terrain including a river.

I mention this as I do spend a lot of time walking in the Peak District. The Peak District has mountain rescue crews doing a similar lifesaving role with their 4×4’s as the lifeguards do but over mountains instead of beaches.

So again, a driverless rescue 4×4 would enable lifesaving support to get anywhere it is needed quicker than a human driver. It would also enable rescuers to concentrate on providing their skilled support whilst the driverless 4×4 whisks them safely off the mountains allowing them to get their patients more quickly to ambulance/helicopter support when needed. 

Other driverless rescue vehicles such as ambulances, fire engines, paramedic, and organ/blood vehicles would also be able to get to and from emergencies much quicker. As a result, driverless vehicles could save lives by the minutes it can cut off any rescue emergency and by the way it saves emergency crews from having to stop giving lifesaving support to drive the rescue vehicle to safety or to where there is other medical support on hand.

If the technology allows driverless rescue vehicles such as ambulances, fire engines, paramedic might be able to talk to other driverless cars along their planned route and as such they will already have moved to the side of the road when the driverless rescue vehicle comes into view. The blue flashing light and siren will still be needed for humans in non-driverless cars and owners wondering why their driverless car has suddenly and unexpectantly pulled over and stopped by the side of the road.

On a different note how often has there been an accident at home or whilst you have been out and about and you need to dash to the hospital i.e. sporting or trampoline related injuries/breakages. Perhaps driverless cars will be fitted with a home emergency program that enables the lights on the car turn to blue flashing and allows it to communicate with the other driverless cars to get them to move out the way whilst it speeds its injured passengers to get medical support, who it can also be in communication with.   

The armed services, if they are not already, could benefit from driverless vehicles. They could get the driverless vehicles to drive onto hostile territories to get injured or trapped servicemen out and to move them somewhere safe.   

As an aside I recently watched a program about a firm that kits out prestige cars for VIPs with bullet proof glass and extra thick bullet proof steel doors amongst other options. Image the extra benefits if the VIP car firms could also program in say a driverless SAS soldier option as the driver. The driverless SAS soldier would be able to professionally deal with all the armoury on-board whilst at the same planning and exiting any attack scene.