All Hail Our New Robot Overlords!

One of the primary enemies of the motorcyclist is the distracted driver.  Busy destroying bird houses on their cell phones or working off that buzz they got from the bar, car drivers or "cagers" as many of us have come to affectionately call them often forget that they are responsible for this two ton combination of metal, plastic and rubber hurtling down the road at speed.  Unfortunately, despite any amount of legislature, we seem to fall victim to these machines and countless incidents between cars and motorcycles occur year after year.  It often comes down to the fact that drivers have better things to do than to be preoccupied with the mundane ritual of having to remain aware of their surroundings as well as stay within the painted lines.  Unfortunately, asking those who already have the privilege of owning their own personal vehicles to renounce it for the luxury of public transportation or taxi service would probably be fruitless.  For the last few years, Google has been working on a system that would allow an individual to relinquish the responsibilities of operating a motor vehicle while retaining the freedom of having personal access at their convenience. 

Despite the controversy that they seem to bring, I personally hope self-driving cars blow up in popularity.  There are many who are opposed to letting autonomous vehicles operate on the roads because they don't believe that they are safe or because they are afraid we'll have a real life robot take over, but it's already been shown that the technology is there to actually create safer roads and that human error has been the primary reason for accidents with the Google self-driving cars.  "Over the 6 years since we started the project, we’ve been involved in 11 minor accidents (light damage, no injuries) during those 1.7 million miles of autonomous and manual driving with our safety drivers behind the wheel," wrote Google's Chris Urmson in a recent post on Medium, "and not once was the self-driving car the cause of the accident."

Being that a large part of the field testing has taken place in California, I assume that the engineers behind this project have accounted for motorcycles and that's huge.  Some might think that since the car is restricted to 25 mph, there won't be much of a difference when it comes to rider safety.  However, statistics show that a majority of accidents involving motorcycles happen on local roads and at intersections where these self-driving cars would be most prevalent.  Hopefully those who see driving as a chore and continue to drive distracted can find these vehicles appealing and we can all benefit.