Safe Roads: Never fear: The future is (mostly) here

Here’s a question for you: How comfortable would you be as a passenger in a fully self-driving car? When I say fully self-driving, I mean it: no hands on the wheel, no foot on the brake, no eyes on the road—no need!

If your answer runs along the lines of, “Well, I wouldn’t like that much at all,” you’re not alone. According to recent AAA research, 71 percent of Americans are afraid to ride in a fully self-driving car.

And who could blame us? Self-driving technology is evolving on a very public stage, and headlines about tragic failures tend to grab more attention than those about incremental successes. No news is good news.

Hidden behind the headlines, of course, is the real story. As it turns out, every time you drive, you’re sharing the road with the technologies that will lead to a fully self-driving car. Nearly every car that rolls off the line these days is equipped with at least one advanced driver assistance system (ADAS). These systems, such as lane-keeping assistance, adaptive cruise control, automatic emergency braking, self-parking, and even automatic headlights, are the building blocks for the fully automated vehicle. Our research found that drivers who have even one of these technologies in their vehicle are nearly 70 percent more likely to trust self-driving tech than those who don’t.

As for me? My car is so low tech I still do all the shifting myself. Still, I did recently ride in the fully self-driving shuttle just introduced at Denver’s 61st & Peña commuter rail station. I walked away impressed: The shuttle handled spectacularly, even when a pedestrian walked directly in its path, and we had to come to a gentle stop. The odds are good you’ll probably find yourself in a similar shuttle sooner than later, as theme parks, airports, and transportation hubs increasingly come to rely on fully automated people movers.

My advice? Sit back and enjoy the ride. It’s a near certainty that increasingly automated vehicles will take to the roads in the coming years. The more we investigate and evaluate self-driving technology now, the better we’ll be able to adapt to a world where we can take our hands off the wheel—and at least in in my case, the stick shift.