Second of a five-part series.
Remember the General Motors ad campaign from the ’80s: “This is not your father's Oldsmobile?"
It doesn’t take a commercial to tell you different generations have different feelings about cars. The same goes for driverless cars.
At Mah Jongg day at the University of Minnesota Duluth’s University for Seniors, 65-year-old Billie Anderson says she can’t wait for driverless cars.
“I’m so excited about driverless cars," Anderson said. "You’ve got older people—I’m sorry, I’m one of them, but I do get distracted, and I know my reaction time is slow. And I see so many people driving around and weaving off, and there they are, talking on the phone. And my daughter used to put lipstick on!”
Seventy-eight-year-old Rochelle Rubin is skeptical.
“I’m not that crazy about any cars because I come from New York City, where we use buses and trains," Rubin said. "What if something goes wrong and you don’t know mechanically to do anything in a driverless car? It’s a machine, and unless the person can at least be in control of the machine.”
But then Anderson points out the benefits self-driving vehicles, especially for older people.
“You’re an elderly person," Anderson said. "You’re driving around looking for a parking space. Your car can drop you off where you want to be. It’ll park itself. You tell the car you’re going to be leaving in five minutes.”
“That’s fabulous. That sounds good,” replies Rubin. “So I changed my mind, in five seconds. I think a lot of people in my generation do feel very lost because the cars are being taken away from them and they’re stranded. You have to depend on buses or on taxis or the generosity of relatives or friends.”
So who’s taking away their keys? Their middle-aged children, who may be the generation most resistant to self-driving cars.
At the Twin Cities Auto Show earlier this year, 52-year-old Herb Lorenz was dead-set against driverless cars.
“Don’t want one because, man, people don’t drive good now, let alone driverless," Lorenz said. "I don’t think I would go there."
He was even skeptical of semi-autonomous features available today, like adaptive cruise control that adjusts your speed to the car ahead of you.
“Oh, really? Great," he said. "If he’s an idiot, I’m an idiot. I don’t want that. I’d rather control my own destination.”
Rounding out the generational divide are millennials, many of whom have a totally different attitude about cars. Andrew Leskey of Duluth, a barber and hair stylist, just turned 25.
“I hate ’em," Leskey said. "They’re just money buckets. If I didn’t have my kid, I’d ride a bike.”
Not all millennials are indifferent about cars. Cale Isaacs and his buddies were at the auto show checking out a stick-shift Miata.
“I really do enjoy driving, myself," Isaacs said. "It would qualify as a hobby.”
Along with age differences, there’s geography. Twenty-six-year-old Eli Hemmilla can’t imagine a self-driving car in the great outdoors.
“For cities, especially, I think it makes a lot of sense," Hemmilla said. "But I do a lot of camping and fishing and climbing in the wilderness areas and stuff. So part of my concern about driverless cars is access issues.”
Yet others do see the benefit of letting the computer take the wheel in remote areas—like, Alan and Carla Stanek, who live near Grand Forks, N.D.
“We live in the rural area, so it’s a lot of highway driving," Alan said. "It would be nice because we drive from Grand Forks to Minneapolis. It’s a straight shot. It begs for driverless cars. In the city where there’s more people, I can see more problems.”
So what does the science say? Studies have wildly different results. A poll this year by insurance website CheapCarInsurance.net showed eight in 10 respondents excited about driverless car technology.
But Brian Schoettle of the University of Michigan’s Transportation Research Institute found nearly 46 percent of motorists wanted no self-driving features at all, even though semi-autonomous cars are already on the road.
“At this early stage in the development of this technology what we’re somewhat measuring too is people’s lack of familiarity or ignorance,” Schoettle.
The Michigan survey also found nearly 40 percent of drivers more accepting of ceding partial control to a computer. But Schoettle says that’s actually the most dangerous scenario, because a driverless car will need you to take control “when the weather or something else has deteriorated to the point where the vehicle can’t handle the situation any more. And then it’s handing control back to a driver who may not be expecting it—who hopefully is sober, but there’s no guarantee of that.”
That means cars will have to be fully autonomous before we can leave the driving completely to them. Predictions say they should dominate the roads 10 to 30 years from now. By then, the middle-aged motorists reluctant to embrace driverless cars today will themselves be seniors looking for a ride.
As for the cars, they won’t be your father’s Oldsmobile.
Robin Washington is a longtime Boston transportation journalist. He may be reached at robin@robinwashington.com or via Twitter @robinbirk.
