Michigan State: Living life in the driver-less lane

There’s been a lot of buzz around self-driving cars in the Mikaniki camp, and for good reason. Day by day, we’re inching towards a future of pure cartonomy, and even though we’re still trying to perfect level 2 of 5, there’s no denying that autonomous cars are high up in the urban planning agenda.

You see, part of the issue at the moment is that for cars to effectively drive themselves, there need to be certain preconditions in place to avoid the sort of mishaps we’ve already witnessed since the whole fad started.

Yes, we’re calling it a fad, because seriously why would anyone want to get in the driver’s seat of a car and not be able to drive it?

The big endeavour

One of these preconditions is geography. You see, a self-driving car wouldn’t be able to navigate the vast desert landscapes of Tatooine. Not yet at least. They’re mostly confined to driving in purely urban conditions, like say Highway 41 from Miami to Naples. Then again, not many people can brave the streets of Mumbai, right?

So rather than trying to build the car around the terrain, areas like Michigan are looking into building their roads around self-driving cars, starting with special driver-less lanes. Yep, pretty soon you can expect to find yet another lane for those bot-driven AVs, and you and your Mustang won’t be allowed in it.

The fellowship of the lane

The state of Michigan and future road-building company, Cavnue, are collaborating in the building of a 40-mile driverless corridor along Michigan Avenue and I-94, connecting Detroit Metropolitan Airport and the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor.

I imagine kids attending the University can expect a driverless pickup at the airport in the not-so-distant future. I also expect they’ll be paying an extra few hundred bucks for this to add to their student debts. Oh well.

Of course, it won’t just be Michigan and Cavenue involved in the project. Joining them at the round table to make sure they’re getting the best in class solution will be Ford, GM, Argo AI, BMW, Honda, Toyota, Waymo and a few others.

That’s a round table to rival King Arthur and his Knights, although ten bucks says Waymo and Cavenue will go it behind Michigan state’s back a la Lancelot and Guinevere.

A work in progress

The fellowship has its work cut out.

They’re still just in phase 1 of the project right now, which will look at the plan’s viability and figure out the best way to implement it going forward. I mean, for you to have such a lane, and to keep it safe, it’s going to be jam packed with sensors, both above and below ground, and as you can imagine this sort of thing takes time and a hell lot of research to make sure that the tech really comes through, and remains futureproof. It also needs to be able to handle Michigan’s hot summers, cold winters, and rude-ass drivers.

And don’t even get us started on cybersecurity. Somebody hacks your driverless car to make it go rogue, and you’ll end up rammed up a truck’s ass.

It seems like we’ve got a long way to go before cities go driverless. Elon Musk doesn’t think so. He thinks we’ll be ready to ditch steering wheels as early as next year. Maybe he’s been enjoying one blunt too many. Or maybe he’s right.