[nabs-l] Fw: [nfb-talk] Fw: Won't it be nice ?

[Peter Donahue]

Good morning again everyone,

    I'm not sure if someone all ready posted this article here but decided 
to forward it for your consideration. The U.S. is not the only country where 
the possibility of blind-drivable cars is being explored. Enjoy.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Ed Meskys" <edmeskys at roadrunner.com>
To: "nfb-talk" <nfb-talk at nfbnet.org>; "nfbnh-news" 
<nfb-new-hampshire at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Monday, April 15, 2013 8:58 AM
Subject: [nfb-talk] Fw: Won't it be nice ?


This was sent to me by a friend in Ireland. This is not the NFB car which a 
blind person actually drives, but is a step on the path. Ed Meskys

----- Original Message ----- 
>From Monday, April 15, 2013 8:34 AM
Subject: Won't it be nice ?



MAGAZINE
14 April 2013 Last updated at 19:37 ET
Blind drivers at the steering wheel
By Damon Rose
BBC News
Innovations in automated driving have led to speculation that blind people 
may be able to take to the wheel. But do they want to drive - and could it 
become a reality?

How would you feel if a blind person pulled up next to you in a car?

This time last year, Google released a video showing a blind man driving a 
car. He was seen going to a local drive-through restaurant near his home in 
San Jose, California, and later collecting dry cleaning without any 
difficulty.

Steve Mahan, the driver, heads the Santa Clara Valley Blind Center and 
hadn't been in the driver's seat of a car since giving up his licence eight 
years earlier after losing 95% of his sight. On this occasion, the only 
action he performed was to press a start button. He couldn't control the car 
independently, but the video showed an intent to make driving more 
accessible and safe for everyone.

"I'm finding there's a lot of buzz, a lot of people in the blind community 
talking about driverless cars," says Mahan.

"In America, getting a driver's licence is a rite of passage. It represents 
being able, having the liberty to go where you want to go. Cars and car 
ownership are important parts of a sense of independence and personal 
power."

Public transport isn't very developed in the US, so being carless can leave 
you isolated and could contribute to problems such as unemployment. Because 
of this, cars can provoke a very emotional response among blind people, says 
Mahan. "We have had clients that will just go out and sit in the vehicles 
they used to drive and turn the motor on, just to be behind the wheel."

The driverless car uses a combination of GPS, laser, radar and 3D 
environment data that was likely to have been collected by Google's other 
cars, the ones whose picture-taking brought us Street View.

Mahan, 60, believes blind people will be driving in his lifetime and, after 
experiencing several journeys in the Google car, says he'd be confident 
enough to use one now if it had talking controls.

Others are much more sceptical.

"I would be surprised if in the next five years these products will reach 
market and we'd be legally allowed to drive," says Hugh Huddy, a campaigns 
officer at the Royal National Institute of Blind People, and who is himself 
blind.

The technology may be heading in one direction, but there are other barriers 
to the prospect of blind people driving - namely lawmakers and other road 
users.

Google has been successful in lobbying the states of Nevada, California and 
Florida, all of which have now passed laws to allow the testing of automated 
cars on their roads. It doesn't follow that people with sight loss will 
automatically be granted a licence, though.

Huddy is concerned about insurance and liability.

"If someone is involved in an accident, a human being could run in front of 
the car, or a load could fall off a lorry, and the technology probably would 
not save you from being in a collision," he says.

It evokes nightmare scenarios of people who can't see, sitting in a metal 
box oblivious to the fact that a truck may be bearing down on them, or 
wondering what that soggy sounding chassis-shaking bump may have been.

Google's automated cars have already travelled 300,000 miles and caused no 
accidents. This is said to be safer than the average driver.

Ingmar Posner, an engineer at the mobile robotics group at the University of 
Oxford, is part of an engineering team working on a car that will be able to 
take the strain off the driver with partial automation.

"Imagine one day on the M25 you're trying to go from A to B. A light will 
come on your dashboard and say, 'I know exactly where I am, we've driven 
this stretch of road loads of times. If you like, I can take over for the 
next 500m.'"

The futuristic idea of a fully-automated vehicle in which you can sit back 
and read while sipping a cappuccino on the way to work is capturing the 
imagination, but isn't yet close to going on sale.

Cars that can do smaller functions, such as control a car in traffic jams, 
keep you inside lane markings or auto-park, are already on the road or about 
to come to market courtesy of Toyota, Mercedes, BMW and others.

Posner believes his car could affordably reach the showrooms in 10 or 15 
years, but that a fully blind person still wouldn't be able to drive it. He 
believes partially automated cars like his will help to make it possible for 
some impairments to be eliminated as barriers to driving.

"The thing I'm envisioning is that visual aids in your field of vision could 
highlight the lane markings for people who find night driving difficult," he 
says. "You also get pedestrian detection in cars these days so the edges [of 
disability and ability] will start to get blurred."

Lots of people will need convincing that someone with no sight should be 
allowed to pilot a road vehicle independently. Mahan thinks a gradual creep 
of automated features will lay the foundations for blind drivers to become 
acceptable.

"What will happen is they will not get comfortable with blind people 
driving, they will get comfortable with the capabilities of self-driving 
cars that sighted people will be using."

He points out that, even if it does occur, cars still won't be the answer to 
all his way-finding challenges.

"There will still be a difficulty getting out of the car and finding your 
way to a front door of where you're headed, once it has parked itself," he 
says







-- 
"The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie- deliberate, 
contrived and dishonest, but the myth- persistent, persuasive and 
unrealistic. Belief in myths allows the comfort of opinion without the 
discomfort of thought"
JFK


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