Taking cars to the Max!

I was reading an article recently about a 65 year old woman who is rallying a 1956 Porsche 356 across seven continents to set a record. She has been competing in the world’s hardest rallies in Mexico, Peru, Peking, Paris, Tasmania, Kenya, and Antarctica

I have also recently been watching an episode of Top Gear, one of the later ones, in which the 3 presenters take their beaten-up second-hand cars around a wall of death. The wall of death is a silo or barrel shaped wooden cylinder inside which drivers of different vehicles travel along the vertical walls held in place by friction and centrifugal force. 

It struck me that people over the years have done lots of stupid things in cars to either defy death or in some mad pursuit of beating some sort of world record.

I was thinking what impact a driverless car explosion would have on people’s desires to carry on doing stupid death-defying things in cars.

I am lucky to remember the exploits of Evel Knievel and Eddie Kidd. The world was fascinated by them risking life and limb riding motorbikes whilst jumping more and more buses and the Snake River Canyon.  I can’t see future generations glued to their screens to see how many buses a driverless vehicle can jump to break the current world record. It will be missing the human life or death suspense that drew us all in years ago.

I have visited the Ruskin Museum at Coniston in the Lake District that has a wing dedicated to Sir Malcolm Campbell and the record-breaking Bluebird. I do recall over the years the sights of Spirit of America, Thrust and now Bloodhound which have all been built to break the land speed record. The land speed record is the highest speed achieved by a person driving a vehicle on land.

Will the land speed record still survive, or will it be changed to include driverless vehicles as well? The problem with including driverless vehicles their ability to be programmed to go faster and not restricted by a human driver no matter how fearless/stupid they may be. Driverless cars are more likely to be able to break the 1000 MPH barrier and go to even higher speeds that wouldn’t be possible if a human was sat on board at the controls.

What will happen to the world record breaking Moffatt brothers if driverless cars take off? “Who?” I hear you cry

For those of you who don’t watch the children’s BBC channels you will have missed a show called Officially Amazing. This show features everyday people trying to break weird, wonderful, and obscure Guinness World Records. The Moffatt brothers are stunt drivers who are regular guests on the show driving old style mini’s whilst trying to break records such as Tightest Forward Parallel Park or narrowest gap driven on two wheel or completing ten donuts in a fan formation, you get the idea!!

There are lots of weird and wonderful car related world records but how will driverless cars fit into the wonderful world of the Guinness World Records? 

I suppose there could now be a driverless car section that recognises that some driverless car programmers/ manufacturers also have mad streaks and want to continue to break various weird Guinness World Records.

Proof that car manufactures, even large ones, can have mad streaks follows a revelation that every Vauxhall car made after 2004 has a shark dotted around it on some piece of plastic. There was me thinking the sharks were on the forecourts outside the cars not in them! 

I suppose with a bit of clever programming a driverless car could be programmed to do stupid things so long as they don’t find their way into production models by mistake.

The question remains though as to whether driverless cars will be programmed and built to do mad things or break world records and if so, will there still be the public appeal?

The public are usually drawn in by the human related dangerous theatrics about to be undertaken. We are drawn in not only by the pizazz around the event and star name involved but more importantly by the life and death element of the activity. This life and death element will be missing from the driverless car challenges and I think unfortunately so will the audiences