Thursday, July 20, 2017

Review: Adventures in Self Driving Cars 2025 by William M. Rea


Genre: Non-fiction

Description:

“The purpose of this article is to explore what might happen when autopilot automobiles become accepted and used in America.

This short book will stimulate your thoughts.”

Author:

No information available.

Appraisal:

The title sounds fun, if a bit vague as to what the adventures it refers to might mean. The short description clarifies. While I suppose someone could think they’ll be reading a short science fiction story of some kind, I assumed what I’d find would be non-fiction. I was right.

Strictly speaking the short (make that extremely short) book technically comes through on its stated purpose. I suppose it even stimulated my thoughts a bit. But those thoughts were as likely to be “isn’t that obvious” or “you can’t be serious” or “what’s the point of this book again?” as actual thoughts about self-driving cars.

The book is primarily a bunch of questions. Some of them, such as wondering on various aspects of how the insurance for self-driving cars will work, are valid questions. They need to be asked and answered before self-driving cars owned by an average man-on-the-street hit the road. Bringing this consideration to my attention might even be useful although it is something that will have to be resolved before you or I will be able to buy our own self-driving car. Whatever the resolution, the average person is unlikely to have much input into finding the answers.

But many of the questions seem to be stretching for things to be concerned about and either aren’t that big of a deal or will have to be resolved before these cars become widely available, just like with any new technology, like that horseless carriage Henry Ford invented. Won’t it scare the animals with all that noise? How are people going to refuel it? How will short people drive it if they can’t reach the pedals? What about really tall 8-year-olds?

This book’s premise is interesting. But why not answer some of the questions? I’m betting the answers are out there for some of them, or at least some possible answers. As it stands it feels like a pointless exercise in fear-mongering.

Buy now from:            Amazon US        Amazon UK

Format/Typo Issues:

A small number of proofing issues if we consider the term “self driving cars” correct. If we go with the usage that appears to be most common and think that this should be “self-driving cars” then we’ve got a big problem with typos. I wrote this off as a style decision rather than error.

Rating: ** Two Stars

Reviewed by: BigAl

Approximate word count: 1-2,000 words

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