“Computer; bring up the home page of the car I’m going to hit.”
I was watching the Discovery Channel about three hours ago watching @discovery.ca and they did a spot on the Detroit Auto Show. Now I’m sure you’re saying; “Gonzo! What’s your beef with the auto show?” My answer to this is absolutely nothing, in fact with the exception of women showcasing cars in super futuristic stewardess uniforms the shows haven’t really changed all that much over the years. In fact, I think the only thing missing from all these throwback conventions are those delightful smoking robots. I would never grow tired of seeing those things.
My beef is with the automakers and the designers themselves. While watching, they did a spotlight on a concept car from the good people at the Ford Motor Company called the 24/7. To this I of course rolled my eyes in dismay, but the silly use of a popular buzz-word for car in itself would not have motivated me to write a rant. What did end up motivating me to write is the reasoning behind the name.
On the outside the car looks relatively benign, in fact until they stated the manufacturer, I thought it was some sort of boxy new Beetle (even the rims looked like the stock Beetle’s). It’s what’s on the inside that’s got me questioning the intelligence of the Ford Motor Company. You see the 24/7 gets it’s name from the fact that the entire dashboard is a gigantic computer that includes among other things, connectivity to the mighty Internet. I mean what the hell are these people thinking? Everyone knows that the use of a cell phone greatly increases your risk of hitting another vehicle or person or being hit yourself by someone who themselves is using a cell. But now the good people in charge of the automotive industry are in effect, telling us that we need to be able to browse the web while we drive our cars.
I offer to you a reason why we shouldn’t have cell phones while we drive, never mind a connection to the WWW. One of my good friends J.G. (who should be giving me the first of his many rants in the near future), has first hand experience with this cell phone related road hazard. His father was struck on two separate occasions, by people using cell phones that were oblivious to everything on the road, even themselves. Both times the car was a complete write off, and the driver of the other car stated that they had no idea that J.G.’s father was even there.
What I’m trying to say is this; why the hell does anyone, and I do mean anyone, need to have a dashboard that can access the WWW? The most that we need is an onboard GPS client, and that’s only to protect us from idiots who think that they can read a map and drive a car at the same time. Now this dashboard computer/browser would be voice operated, and deliver content via a speech generator, but that’s not the point. It’s been proven that the cause of accidents involving cell phones is not the act of holding the damn thing, it’s from the distraction of the conversation itself. It’s like Windows 98, run too many apps at the same time and you run the risk of crashing your computer; same goes in your car, do too many things at the same time and you run the risk of crashing your car.
The automakers seem not to care though, they expect to have these computers/browsers in our new cars in one form or another within the next 2-5 years. I just think that we should wait until our cars drive us before we bother with such a frivolity as surfing the WWW in our cars.
“The dashboard was full of esoteric lights & dials & meters that I would never understand–but there was no doubt in my mind that I was into a superior machine.”