Hover-cars may still be a thing of the future, but what’s already here in Michigan at least is a shuttle that drives itself. Mcity’s Driverless Shuttle can be seen traveling along its roughly mile-long route at the University of Michigan’s North Campus Research Complex (NCRC) in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
The shuttle is just that—a small, compact vehicle fit for eight-to-10 passengers and a Safety Conductor, who sits among passengers and keeps an eye out for any hiccups in the operation. At the moment, the shuttle is pre-programmed to follow a planned path and to stop at several points along the way, requiring the Safety Conductor’s prompting to continue. The interior is spacious without an engine, running on charged batteries instead, and it provides plenty of legroom and has wide windows wrapping nearly all the way around. The shuttle drives slowly but surely, steady on its turns. But with a reaction time faster than that of the average human, its halting function is sensitive and can be very abrupt, caused even by the likes of a passing squirrel or bird.
Its general driving attitude is cautious, unhurried, even-keeled – almost as though it were a driver’s education student looking to their instructor. At this stage in its development, safety belts are required for all passengers, and rightly so – but I never once felt in any danger. I wonder if things might’ve been different in the face of heavy traffic or at higher speeds.
That’s the current point of interest at the campus research center—the public’s reaction. New technologies have not always been so willingly accepted by the public, and with the kind of intimate history that America, and especially Michigan, has with vehicles, driverless technology is bound to have a massive impact on the way this society runs if it becomes integrated within the transportation network.
On that note, I tend to be optimistic. The benefits of driverless technology seem to far outweigh its drawbacks, on a personal, city-wide, and possibly even country-wide or global level. On the upside, it promises a fuel-efficient and cost effective alternative to personal and mass transit, using pre-existing infrastructure (roads, signs). Due to its smaller size and greater mobility than a regular city bus, it may also come to save on travel time. And in spite of potential public safety fears, this technology could in fact present fewer driving risks. Its reaction times are immediate and calculated, and it could also eventually be made to communicate with other similar vehicles regarding road conditions and dangers.
The disadvantages include the jobs it may replace, even with the current national shortage of truck drivers, and of course the fact that it is operated by a computer, and computers can hit errors. But so can humans!
In some ways, I can’t help but wonder if driverless technology would in fact create other jobs, too—jobs in technology maintenance and troubleshooting. Even Safety Conductors would perhaps continue to be integral.
As it is, the driverless shuttle is still in its early stages, and I can only encourage others to investigate it. In many ways, it felt entirely natural, a Safety Conductor in place of the driver, still ultimately in control, and the bus following a route. If I hadn’t known already that it was driverless—and if it hadn’t been clear by the lack of steering wheel and pedals—I might not have guessed that the shuttle was automated. I imagine it might have felt a little more immediate had I been the only one on the bus, but I trust the engineers and technicians behind it, and I think that as a technology it has great potential in the very near future to be on the roads.
—Zoe Allen-Wickler
