I recently saw this headline in the news and I was naturally curious as to what had happened.
Turns out the electric car had suffered a catastrophic malfunction whilst on the go and was now stuck doing 30 MPH.
The only driver aid that seemed to work was the steering wheel and the brakes had stopped working.
The driver even threw the key fob to a police car travelling next to him and that didn’t work either. In the end the only way he could stop was to crash into the back of a police van.
Luckily he was by himself and he was able to use his mobile phone to get help and prevent any major accidents or loss of life.
Even when the car’s engineers were contacted they couldn’t help out over the phone either.
From a driverless car perspective there are 2 things that struck me about this article.
Firstly if you were in a driverless car at what point would you realise that the car had a catastrophic malfunction. You may well be in the back seat and not looking to see what the car is doing.
Also what do you do when you do realise that there has been a catastrophic malfunction?
Are you able to to get into the driver’s seat and if so do you have the ability to drive?
Do any controls work? Is there a driver override switch ?
Is there someone in the car saying “I told you not to buy a driverless car”, is there someone saying I need the loo,
Is there a way like laptops that a person in a control centre can remotely take over the controls of the car, sort the issue and stop the car safely and quickly.
Perhaps there’s a way to stop the cars power supply i.e. electric/diesel/petrol
Lots of questions that will need to be answered to ensure that any external technical support is able to access your driverless car and correct any problems it is encountering.
The second thing that struck me about the headline was whether the the car had actually kidnapped it’s owner which is a much more sinister aspect especially from a driverless car perspective.
This is the opposite in that you need to ensure any external hostile forces are not able to access your driverless car and take over control for say criminal reasons.
If high profile people are going to be travelling around in driverless cars what functionality will there be in place to stop someone hacking into the cars computer systems and then getting the car to drive to some remote location with the passenger being helpless in the back.
Or alternatively could we start to see live footage of police cars chasing driverless cars where the the passengers are being held hostage and live ransom demands are being agreed in order to stop the kidnapper/hacker from crashing the car or driving it off a cliff.
Although if they do have a mobile phone like the original man did then at least they can still keep in touch with the outside world and agree the best action to take.
Driverless Cars will never take off 