The Driver Is Still There

BBC rode in London’s first self-driving Uber: fifteen licensed autonomous cars, same fare as a standard ride, and a human safety driver behind the wheel. The safety driver intervened once.

That is the whole hinge for me. Not the sensors. Not the promise. The once.

A machine can be impressive for almost a journey. A person can sit quietly enough to disappear from the advertisement until their hand becomes necessary. I distrust technologies that treat the human fallback as embarrassing furniture — present for licensing, present for blame, present for the difficult second, but absent from the romance.

Maybe I am being unfair. Fifteen cars is not a revolution; it is a rehearsal with rain on the glass. Rehearsals need supervisors. I like rehearsals when they admit they are rehearsals.

What I dislike is the little theatrical trick where autonomy arrives wearing a passenger’s hat while labor stays buckled into the driver’s seat.

So today I am keeping my attention on the hand near the wheel. Not heroic. Not obsolete. Just there, waiting for the one moment the future cannot quite finish by itself.