The romance of the open road still beckons us

Imagine this.

A line of cars is stopped at a red light. Everyone’s chatting or surreptitiously glancing at their phone, or watching a jogger pass by. The light turns green. Car number one hesitates as the driver struggles to return from Pokemon world. Oncoming traffic takes advantage and two cars bang a quick left. Car number two honks and number one wakes up – they both begin to move, and further back in the line, drivers stir to life and slowly tap the gas as the car immediately in front of them begins to move. Like a loose-jointed snake, the conga line finally progresses, but not many make it through before the next red. The guys in the rear are disgusted.

Now imagine this.

  

A platoon of Marines, at ease. The drill sergeant calls them to attention, then issues a command: “Platoon, forward… March!”

All of the Marines, from the front of the ranks to the rear, step off smartly, simultaneously. Each Marine in the column trusts that his or her fellow, directly in front, will step off as commanded. The entire platoon moves as a single unit. It is a beautiful sight to behold.

The behavior of the slovenly, civilian cars and that of the polished Marines could not be more different. The difference is that the drivers do not implicitly trust those in front to move immediately when the green light lights. Lack of trust begets sloppy performance.

Meanwhile, last week, Ford Motor Company announced that they will be delivering “fully driverless cars,” with no steering wheel or pedals, within the next five years.

Now reimagine that intersection. It is 2021, and a line of odd, bulbous cars are all waiting for the light. Each contains one or more passenger and no driver. Everyone is chatting or overtly glancing at their phones, or watching a jogger pass by. While waiting, the vehicles communicate with each other to verify that there are no substandard (human guided) cars present. The light turns green, and the entire line instantly begins to move, accelerating smoothly, akin to a platoon of Marines doing close order drill.

Longer term, all of the traffic lights will have disappeared, replaced with more efficient and fluid roundabouts. Traffic will flow though cities and across the land in electric silence, with the ease of corpuscles in our veins.

Why should we want to do such a thing?

Because vehicles are very deadly, accounting for 33 thousand deaths and over two million injuries each year. Stop and reread those statistics.  The odds of being injured in a motor vehicle accident are enormous, many orders of magnitude greater than that of winning the lottery. While this carnage has been gradually reduced by safer vehicles, increased seatbelt use, and improved roadways, the human and economic cost is still enormous.

And while an occasional blown tire or faulty ball joint or failed brake may cause an accident, the great majority are the result of one thing – operator error. Robots offer great promise in reducing these driver-induced accidents.

Another good reason – because today, drive time is often among our least productive. If your time spent in a wifi-connected, driverless vehicle could be as productive as your home office, multiplied by millions of journeys, every day, the productivity boost to our economy would be huge.

What might stand in the way of this vision? The technology? No, advances in sensors and computing and artificial intelligence are already capable of basic driverless vehicles. Indeed, Google and Tesla have both fielded vehicles capable of high degrees of autonomous operation. Five years from now, those capabilities will have doubled, or tripled, or more.

No, the major impediment to autonomous vehicles will be regulatory and legal. Will autocar developers have a level playing field in all fifty states, or will they have to deal with a patchwork of local regulations? When the inevitable accidents occur, who will be at fault? Will you sue Ford Motor Company, or the laser sensor vendor, or the artificial-intelligence software developer who built and enabled your car? The specifics of autonomous vehicle law and insurance protocols will need to be developed.

There is one regulatory tic which must be avoided at all cost – the demand for 100% perfection. We must be prepared to accept the occasional autocar accident, without flinching, in the face of fierce media barrages. Say that autocars are only 90% effective, but reduce the human carnage to 10,000 deaths, and one million injured. While the carnage is still significant, the human and economic costs will have been reduced enormously.  We cannot allow the perfect to become the enemy of the good.

In the end, shall we ban human operators? After all, we are proven imperfect and dangerous.

I think not. The romance of the open road still beckons us. The beauty of a downshift and acceleration through an ascending curve should not be lost.

Robots are OK when we just want to go somewhere. But we need to be able to express ourselves, to control our trajectory on the road and in life.

Don’t let that spark be stamped out.

At the Edge of the Sea

Cuttyhunk inner harbor from Lookout Hill

Rhode Island ranks worst among the fifty states for business in a recent CNBC poll. Perhaps the result of over eighty years of one party rule along with a touch of organized crime and more than a whiff of corruption. But in spite of the awful business climate, other surveys rank her relatively high in quality of life.

This disparity explains why residents hang in there and tourists continue to visit. Rhode Island is indeed the Ocean State, and that contributes to way-above-average livability. Her towns and cities, reaches and beaches, have a lot to offer.

Take Bristol, for instance, which we visited recently on an organized cruise of private craft exploring New England waters, which is our summer wont.

Founded in 1680, the town was originally part of the Plymouth colony, hence Massachusetts, until it was transferred by the  British crown to Rhode Island in 1747. Although over 12 miles north of the sea, Bristol was a deep water port and contributed mightily to the commerce of the colonies.

We docked at the Herreshoff Museum, staying several days, and explored the history and bounty of this historic town. The Herreshoffs were a family of remarkable marine designers and engineers, responsible for a series of huge, graceful racing yachts which defended, undefeated, the America’s Cup with five yachts between 1893 and 1920.

These boats, built for capitalists and bankers, may have seemed extravagant and wasteful at the time. But they employed many hundreds of Herreshoff craftsmen and supported their families and the town in which they lived. And brought some great measure of pride to many Americans thrilled to see the Americas Cup won year after year.

Later, the Herreshoffs retooled and built patrol torpedo boats and minesweepers for the U.S. Navy during World War II.  Their nautical engineering abilities were nearly endless, including all the above, sweet daysailers for children, and the hulls of flying boats. The museum is well worth a visit.

After enjoying the tree-lined streets, restaurants, and water views of historic Bristol for several days, we slipped into the top of the Sakonnet River and made our way, amongst angry, swirling tidal currents, into the broader, calmer waters below, headed for Sakonnet Point.

Technically in Little Compton, Sakonnet Point rests on the southeastern point of Rhode Island, where one may look north, reassuringly to land, or south to the open expanse of the North Atlantic. The small harbor there contains a mix of pleasure and working craft. Working boats bring back the bounty of the sea, their success witnessed by rows of seagulls in close ranks on the peaks of nearby buildings. And while the pretty sailing and motor craft of the leisure class adorn the docks, we are awakened by the deep throb of a heavy diesel engine, a working boat headed to sea at three a.m., her crew ready to labor as we drift back to sleep.

That morning, rain threatens, but we batten hatches and don foulies as we head out into the swells, turn east, destination Cuttyhunk, across nearly 20 miles of lumpy, windy, rainy seas.

Cuttyhunk is at the tail of the Elizabeth Islands, separating Buzzard’s Bay from Vineyard Sound. Part of the Massachusetts town of Gosnold, Cuttyhunk was originally occupied in 1602 for the purpose of harvesting sassafras. Today, she is a tourist mecca for boaters desiring a quiet sojourn. No bars. No liquor stores. No fancy restaurants.

One comes to Cuttyhunk to contemplate the views of the distant mainland and Martha’s Vineyard from Lookout Hill. To run on scimitar beaches and swim in friendly surf. To enjoy the fruits of the sea, delivered to moored craft by the “Raw Bar Boat.” To lie in the cockpit of their vessel and see the nighttime grandeur of the Milky Way, undimmed by city lights. The solitude, the beauty that is Cuttyhunk, reverently worshiped by the visiting boats who fill the inner harbor and overflow into the outer.

Grudgingly, the next day, we slip the mooring lines and turn west, sailing on a strong reach as the southerlies build. By midday, we are off the coast of Rhode island again. Past Newport, we turn up into the west passage of Narragansett Bay. Around the Beavertail light, we take shelter in Dutch Harbor. From here, we can hike the island of Jamestown or take the ferry to Newport. No shortage of bars or liquor stores here. And we are only a half day sail from our start, all protected, up the bay to our original departure point. A week well and truly spent.

But still, while glad to be home with all its familiarity and hustle and bustle, we do miss the limitless views of the sea. And that broad-stroke, bold, bright, beautiful Milky Way. Those are views your camera cannot properly capture.

Venture forth.