(^26) MGE AUGUST 2019 http://www.mgenthusiast.com
think opinions will be quite
varied amongst you,
depending on your daily
interaction with cars and
the level of modern technology
employed. My view depends on what I
am driving. Reflecting on life’s
experiences I’ve seen how age can
affect people’s ability to cope with
even simple technology. It is starting
to reflect on my outlook as the scope,
width and depth of interaction with
new technology grows.
Some aspects of current
technology I feel quite comfortable
with. It takes me longer to become
au fait with new items, such as a new
smart phone, that appear smarter
than me, or more specifically does so
much more than I have any interest
in or use for. This isn’t helped by
manufacturers’ instructions being
more complex than fungi mycelia,
and needing to use the phone itself
to explore this. There is also a
practical restriction, as aging eyes do
not read a small screen so well, and
zooming in with fat fingers often sees
me scrolling about the magnified
page like a drunken pond skater!
Is the modern car, similarly,
becoming too clever for its own
good? My answer is not a simple
binary response but actually yes and
no, depending on the specific area of
technology in question. We seem to
be heading to a point where many
will start to question the need for a
car’s complexity and potential added
costs born from these additions,
especially when future maintenance
is taken into the equation.
Clearly autonomous driving
technology is developing to ‘assist’
and then replace the driver from
what some see as a mundane task
and, at a stroke, will theoretically
remove the biggest variable and
danger on our roads today. Certainly
this will cater for a driver’s human
shortcomings such as failing to spot
the motorcyclist hidden behind the
ultra-thick A-pillars, there to
strengthen the roof structure when
you roll the car, or spot that traffic
has suddenly slowed in front. These
should be beneficial changes. That
then begs the obvious question as to
whether autonomously-controlled
vehicles are safe to be mixed with
human-controlled vehicles:
something Tesla is already doing
with its Autopilot system, but that is
another subject for another time.
The ‘too much technology in
today’s cars’ question can also be
answered with a ‘no’ when you look
at the background aspects of items
such as autonomous emergency
braking, stability control, lane
departure and driver alertness
systems. Here we see the Euro NCAP
I
Roger Parker is a former policeman whose technical skill and wide
experience of MGs form the backbone of our own Technical Q&A pages.
This month Roger asks whether there is too much technology in today’s cars.
Tech temptation
ABOVE: It is not that many years ago that having an integrated screen in a car, in
this case the MG ZT, was seen as advanced technology, with its integrated on-board
sat nav, radio and display on one screen. The manufacturer’s safety feature was
that any video being shown was muted when the vehicle was moving.