Cruising in a New Self-Driving Cadillac

Cadillac's Super Cruise allow genuinely hands-free driving on highways.


It was weird sitting in the driver's seat of a Cadillac sedan with my hands on my lap and my feet flat on the floor as the car, going over 70 miles an hour, passed an 18-wheeler on a curve.

The first time I did that, my arm muscles tensed, ready to grab the steering wheel. The second time that happened, I worried a lot less. The third time, it didn't even occur to me to worry. I just sat back and let the car keep on cruising. In all, I probably drove about 150 miles down I-95 from New York City to Washington, DC, while not actually driving.

I was using Cadillac's new Super Cruise technology. Similar systems, including Tesla's AutoPilot and Mercedes-Benz's Drive Pilot, automatically maintain a safe distance behind cars ahead on the highway and can keep your car safely in its lane, just like the Cadillac. But they require your hands on the steering wheel most of the time.

Cadillac's SuperCruise requires your attention but not your hands. I could take my hands off the wheel but I could not take my eyes off the road.

CNN:  I sort of drove a self-driving Cadillac 150 miles


As he observes, you can take your hands off the wheel but you can't drop your attention on the road and it knows if you do since it watches you with a tiny camera.

A tiny camera on the steering column watched my face. If I turned away from the road for too long a bar of light in the steering wheel rim began flashing then, after a bit, changed color from green to red. Finally, after about 10 seconds, a tone would sound and Super Cruise would refuse to keep working.

This is Cadillac parent General Motors' (GM) answer to the toughest challenge of automated cars, their human drivers. Until self-driving cars are perfect, which won't be for some time, human beings will have to remain mentally engaged in driving even when they're not actually doing it. We'll need to be ready to take control.

- CNN

Frankly, mates, this is kind of cool but it's not blowing me away to Buffalo.  Self-driving cars of this nature which do it so long as there's a human driver may well slow down the initiatives toward autonomous vehicles.

Zen Yogi:  who wants to go to Buffalo anyway?

I guess if you like spending half of your life buried in lake effects snow, it's a real treat, Yogi.



We have seen how other parts of the automotive industry have bypassed this stage and we saw within recent days from the same company an autonomous truck which is highly-capable and doesn't need a human anywhere near it.  Now that is some cool hardware.  (Ithaka:  General Motors Development of a Self-Driving Cargo Truck)

General Motors built the Cadillac and also the truck so Today's Mystery is why would they add the requirement for a human driver to the car but not the truck.  It seems like they're designing for Virgin Galactic:  Automotive Division since this market won't last any longer than Richard Branson's low-orbit tourist flights.  As we have seen, Virgin Galactic has already mostly disappeared whereas the big boomers in space flight such as SpaceX, Orbital ATK, and Blue Origin are making major developments in commercial space flight.

Zen Yogi:  you seriously don't want human involvement in the way of the Cadillac?

I don't, Yogi, since my view is this wastes billions of dollars on a short-term solution when the thing we actually need is driverless vehicles or pay-no-attention vehicles in which we're all just passengers.