J Y Provocative Question # 34: What are your thoughts on autonomous vehicles?

            It is ironic that we already have autonomous vehicles that have been in use for many years believe it or not.

Just the other day, True_George visited Los Angeles, California. True_George discovered two things while in LA, first LA has a subway system. Although the subway system in LA is not has old, or big as it is in good old New York City, it does have a feature that the NYC subway does not.

The trains are fully autonomous. Yes, there are no conductors, or train drivers operating the train. I suppose that there are no real issue, with having an autonomous system, because if there was then it would be in the news, and there won’t be any more autonomous subway system.

Also, would you believe that ships were the first type of vehicles to become autonomous. The auto pilot in ships was developed around the beginning of the 20^th century. Ships were equipped with a fully functioning auto pilot system by 1912.  Geez, that’s over one hundred years ago. So naturally the seaborne vehicle autopilot system was extended to the submarines, they are completely autonomous.

Another autonomous vehicle is the aircraft. The United States Air Corps, and the United States Navy were experimenting with auto pilot system before and during World War II. Nowadays, autopilot is a standard feature in almost every aircraft, from military, commercial to private aircraft. Even single engine aircrafts. It is said that on a commercial flight, that the auto pilot does 99% of the flying.

So you see that every type of vehicle has an autonomous system except the over the road cars. Maybe because the cost of having an autonomous car on the road is expensive.  

Although not for the lack of trying, because I believe the Telsa has some type of auto pilot system. But it isn’t fully autonomous because the driver would need to supervise it. True_George believes that it is only a matter of time before a fully autonomous car will be developed.

Whether we like it or not, having an autonomous car is in the cards for the future. The kinks are being ironed out. Once the engineers get it together and the cost of having such a feature worked out I bet it will become a standard feature in a car.