Driverless cars are a great idea in concept, but they may be further off then we expect in the masses. While cars that are capable of driving themselves do exist, they rely on the driver to be attentive. The cars are good in concept but lack in the areas of econimic availability, self control under its own awareness, and the possibility of a human driver taking over the reigns at a bad opportunity.

Now, save for the upper middle and upper class, the cost of a car is generally too high for someone in the middle to lower middle class to even think about purchasing a brand new car. Newer model cars are expensive enough from common brands like Chevy, Dodge, and Ford. The manufactures like Mercedes-Benz, Audi and some newer sport-class Nissans are too high to even think about. The idea of a car like that would be just a dream to some people. Who knows how much a self aware car would go for. The amount of programming and man hours it would take to get the car going does not even surmount to the possible costs of maintenence. You could take the mechanics already aware of the technology and upcharge everyone just because you get greedy, or you could take small shop mechanics and force them to understand new concept and possibly even invest in new technology. After that, what about the accidents. Imagine you total you brand new smartest car. Who is to say that your insurance will even have a policy if you become one of the few first people to own the smartest car. With inflation, it only makes things worse. All in all, economically, the "smartest" car may not be your smartest choice.

One of the subjects I plan on touching on is the cars capability of driving itself in the first place. Now, I know the author brought up the point that while there is "Traffic Jam Assistant" from BMW the author very well shows that this is still somewhat a ways away from being capable of driving itself. The full self-awareness of a car is the suspected dream in my eyes, so the Traffic Jam Assistant by BMW is not necessarily a step in the wrong direction, but rather a baby step into the foothold of what will, possibly be, fully automated and self driving cars. While I do not necessarily agree with the full development of mass quantities of smartest cars,

I do believe small aspects such as the Traffic Jam Assistant and other small changes into a vehicles capabilities could definitly make a change in the world and possibly create a relatively safer driving enviroment in the future.

The final subject I would like to touch on is possibly the worst thing that could happen if these cars are produced in the masses; What if a human driver took over the wheel, in fear or for some other reason, and caused an accident. Now, I know what you may think, "Oh but they're fully automated, they can drive themselves why would you need a human behind the wheel." Well, when you think about it, neurologically, the brain has more computing power than the average computer (courtesy of the book "What If") and may be able to react faster or even alter the cars movement and take notice before a computer does. Now this is a good thing. Or is it. When you think about it, it is really a coin toss at that point. While a human may be able to react faster and better, we may also overreact to a situation. What I mean by this is imagine there is a deer in the road. Now the computer may attempt to purely stop but human instinct makes us want to avoid this dear at all costs. So you swerve and avoid the deer. Lucky you, you just totalled your smartest car on the biggest oak tree you have ever seen. Now this is just a worse case scenario but I am sure you can see the picture I attempted to paint with my crude situation.

At the end of it all, looking back, the smartest car is not necessarily the worst idea we have ever com up with, but it is by far not the best. One could argue that the smartest car could be a new revolution of vehicles and could change the way we think about driving. That is true, but who ever said it would be a good change. Sure a self aware car would be cool, but whenever something can go wrong, it will go wrong. While the concept is good, I just do not believe that it is the proper time to be bringing self driving cars onto the roads of this world. Maybe one day it will be, but I hope that it remains a concept car until we can work more kinks out of its base structure.