On Sunday, March 18, a woman crossing the road in Tempe, Arizona, was hit by one of Uber’s autonomous driving vehicles and killed. Ironically, the car had a person monitoring the driving performance and was present. Apparently, either the driver was not watching or couldn’t react fast enough to prevent the tragedy.

On June 30, 2016, an autonomous driving vehicle manufactured by Tesla with an owner/driver aboard smashed into an 18-wheeler and the driver was killed.

These two incidents produced two casualties caused by autonomous driving vehicles. One driving the car and other a pedestrian hit by the car. Either way, this exposes the basic and extremely serious flaws in the technology. First of all, the system failed to recognize the object: one an enormous 18-wheeler and the other a human being walking with a bicycle across the road. In either case the driver couldn’t react fast enough to prevent the fatalities.

I understand there are about 1,000 registered autonomous driving autos in this country and a substantial number are being tested for research and development purposes. If one calculates the rate of casualties per autonomous vehicle as of this writing, the rate is 0.001 per vehicle per year. This nation has approximately 253 million registered vehicles on the road. If we extrapolate the death rate by the autonomous driving vehicle total traffic deaths would be 253,000 per year. The figure is astronomically higher than the death rate by standard vehicles, which produced 37,461 deaths in 2016, a 102 death a day.

Therefore, the autonomous driving vehicle kills seven times faster than conventional vehicles driven by humans. Readers, do not think I am serious in presenting this argument. Any technological development produces various unreliability and accidents caused by them until the technology and its manufacturing methods get improved and stabilized. All new products go through the teething period and autonomous driving vehicles would undeniably go through the immature period.

I decided to write about this subject not because I believe autonomous driving vehicles are dangerous and we should slow down or crush the effort to commercialize the technology. I know the amount of development expenditure for the project hovers around $4 billion to $10 billion through the next 10 years. That is a relatively reasonable sum if we can perfect the technology and successfully commercialize it within the decade. I also trust the technology will cut down the rate of traffic deaths and injuries. Otherwise, why develop such a technology?

Now my last question. Is the autonomous driving vehicle the most urgent technology we need at this point among technical development and inventions in the auto industry? This question haunts me. I received my driver’s license in 1959, so I have been driving 59 years. I have never wished I had an automatic driving car, just so I can relax, read a book or take a nap. I like driving and enjoy the passing scenery. America is a beautiful country and driving through it is a grand pleasure. In my business education, I have been taught to develop or invent things that solve problems for people. The more painful the problem, the better the invention would be in its effectiveness. The autonomous driving vehicle just isn’t at the high point of our needs.

I was parking my car in an outdoor parking place. The March wind was relentlessly blowing. A large four-door car arrived next to my car and an elderly lady tried to get out. The strong wind pushed the door and she had a hard time pushing the door back to get out. I walked over to her car and held the door for her, so she could get out. She thanked me profusely. A sudden gust pushed my body hard and the door momentarily pinched her between the door and front seat. She almost fell, but as luck would have it, she didn’t. I apologized for my clumsiness and she gracefully thanked me.

Where is a car door that locks at a certain angle and holds fast against a wind gust? For some reason, auto-makers never manufactured cars with doors that could hold at a certain angle of the owner’s choice? Combined with a motorized mechanism the door can be opened with a push-button activator. This would be a boon to the aging population, whose arm strength is ever getting weaker.

This, I can assure you, requires no high-end technology. Yet, no auto-maker has ever offered this feature. Due to intensified safety requirements, auto doors are getting sturdy and heavy. This means the aging population will have hard time dealing with them. Isn’t this problem a more urgent need than, say, autonomous driving vehicle development? Making doors that are light and electrically operated requires no high-end technology. We can design doors that serve our aging population almost immediately. My question is: why not?

There are many other problems our aging population suffers from every day. Please write to me at sasano@umelink.com and let us discuss your issue in depth. I also have a cup of coffee at Ceres Bakery at 51 Penhallow St. in Portsmouth on Monday, Wednesday and Friday around 8 a.m. If you have an invention idea and do not know how to proceed, I might be able to assist you. No guaranty though.
