As automotive-related jobs are changing with the shift towards electric and autonomous vehicles, another job might soon be redundant, and that is of the driving instructor. While not all driving instructors are bad at their job, this writer’s instructor mumbled during lessons and fell asleep when it was her first time driving on the highway. So, she’s biased when she writes that General Motors has a great idea. The automaker, which is also set to launch their first commercial robo-taxi soon, has applied for a patent on an autonomous vehicle that can teach new drivers.
The patent filing, titled “Methods and Systems to Autonomously Train Drivers”, details using the autonomous car’s sensors to track the student driver’s control inputs—such as accelerator, brake pedals or steering wheel direction—and provide real-time feedback, although the filing didn’t specify how that would be done (whether visual or auditory). These sensors are the very same LIDAR, cameras and GPS technology that allows an autonomous car to navigate by itself.
The training system would also compare the driver’s actions to what its algorithm, that is the benchmark, would have done to generate a score that can be shared with the student and their parents.
But if the era of autonomous cars are upon us—and it would seem that GM thinks so—wouldn’t driving soon become a redundant skill? GM agrees. In the filing, GM said that “the human may wish to drive for personal satisfaction” or “the human may be in a situation…which an operational autonomous vehicle may not be available or permitted…” The future in which self-driving cars dominate has not yet arrive and won’t, at least for some time yet, and will take longer still for the whole world to get on board. So, meanwhile, whether you like it or not, we’ll still have to drive ourselves.
Even as GM is now in the final stages of launching Cruise, there are still many kinks to iron out, such as a recent incident when a police officer pulled over one of their autonomous test cars for “driving” without headlights and was confused as to what to do when there was no driver inside.
With the concern that autonomous technology in the car makes one a worse driver, at least here’s one autonomous feature that is meant to make you a better one. And this writer is all for it. How about you?
