HAL 9000 IS YOUR CHAUFFER

Cars have come a looooong way. So far in fact, they have managed to all but remove the person that was originally designed to drive them. New offerings from BMW, Volvo, Mercedes, Ford and GM have all gone into the realm of the unknown with their current crop of vehicle driver-assist technologies. Do we really want a car that has a lap-top in the dash? Who's driving the damn car while you are downloading 47,000 vaginas a second? Who's watching for people riding their bikes with their families while you enable your blue-tooth-parallel-park-assist-device? If you can't parallel park your own damn vehicle, you shouldn't own one in the first place. Volvo has a new crash avoidance system that allows you to text your teenage girlfriends all the juicy gossip from TMZ.com while not even pretending to pay even the slightest bit of attention to what you are doing behind the wheel of the car. Is this good? BMW has a new onboard system that can detect lane changes due to driver fatigue. Once it determines you are sleepy, a coffee-cup icon glows on the dash and the car corrects it's lane assignment for you. What if I don't like coffee?


***This pic was from a road race in Mexico last year, when a drunk driver plowed into about 50 riders...
What if I'm swerving because there are bits from broken cyclists in the road that the girl in the Volvo in front of me just plowed into? Mercedes is introducing "myCOMAND," which is what they are calling an onboard "infotainment system." What in the name of god have we become if we need to be infotained every second of the waking hours? Can't we just focus on the task at hand long enough to get to work every day?
Every recent study on multi-tasking shows that it doesn't work, and people suck at driving anyway...so how is the mental cop-out of a smart-car going to help? We don't take responsibility for things now, how will it be once we can say "It wasn't MY fault, my car did it!" Does anyone stand to benefit from all this other than lawyers? Once the first wreck or accident happens with these vehicles....and it will...the feeding frenzy will explode and with any luck, all this crap will have to be removed from vehicles. Have you ever seen 2001, A Space Odyssey? Remember HAL? "I wouldn't do that If I were you, Dave," said the emotionless automaton, glowing and indifferent red eye watching your every move. Do you really want your car calling your cel phone with live video of your teenage daughter doing the horizontal mambo with her 35 year old skeezy boyfriend in the backseat of your BMW at 2a.m.?



***Do you want this guy having access to googlemaps in your neighborhood from his van?
I'm guessing not, and the only thing that would make me happy at that point is if my "smartcar" would have been smart enough to hit him in the bean bag with a cattle prod that arose ever-so slightly from betwixt the seat cushions. That's right. I said "betwixt."
That's why I love my mountain bike. For all the high-tech involved in making the frames, parts and accessories, it still just comes down to whether I am going to sack up and try that log bridge, gap-jump, switchback, g-out or ledge. If I come up short and break my collarbone...well.. at least I made the decision, not my heart rate monitor or my GPS (already too much technology on a bike in my opinion). The only thing I'd like to see in a car that can assist a driver is maybe a laser-guided drive-thru ATM alignment tool, so that the next time I come up behind that same old lady at the bank who takes three hours to get next to the ATM with her car, she won't have to open her door and get out just to pull a twenty like usual...