Aha, the joys of driving a high-performance sports car!
You feel the sports car hugging the road and the nimble handling allows you to sweetly make those tight turns.
With impeccable steering, amazing aerodynamics, superb suspension, high maneuverability, and spirited performance, you are in your own dream world while actually rocketing down the open highway at a cruising speed of 120 miles per hour, doing so knowing that your sports car tops out at 200 mph and you’ve got a lot of zip yet to be applied on your speedometer.
Maybe you are driving a Ford Shelby GT350 that can hit 180 mph, goes from 0 to 60 mph in 3.7 seconds and has a horsepower of 526.
Or, maybe instead you opted for the Dodge SRT Viper which can top out at 206 mph, does the 0 to 60 mph in just 2.3 seconds and has a horsepower of 645.
Or, perhaps you wanted to put your other sports cars pals to shame, so you shelled out the big bucks to get yourself a Hennessey Venom, allowing you to hit speeds of up to 270 and having a horsepower of a whopping 1244.
Some people get a sports car because they like the speed, handling, and the other features that allow for a special driving experience.
Some get a sports car because they love the image of a sports car, and a sports car driver, often seen as someone that relishes the open road, a maverick, and that craves the looks of other people as they turn their heads to see what that sports car is (and who’s in it). You could also suggest that a sports car could be an investment, though you’d need to keep it in good shape.
But, nonetheless, yes, many “hobbyists” collect sports cars like you might collect stamps. Sometimes those collectors don’t even drive sports cars and merely put them on display at their man cave or woman cave.
When someone drives a sports car, they can do so on our public roadways or drive it on private so-called closed tracks.
Driving Top-End Sports Cars On Public Roadways
In theory, when you drive a sports car on a public roadway, you are supposed to abide by the driving laws.
If you are driving on an open highway and the speed limit is say 75 mph, you aren’t supposed to be going 180 mph, even if your sports car can do so. I’ve had some sports car owners that tell me they couldn’t help but go way over the speed limit since the sports car is so quiet at 150 mph they had no idea they had doubled the speed limit. The sports car is purring at those speeds, they say.
Nonetheless, the law is the law.
It doesn’t really matter that you happen to have a sports car. The speed limit is the same for a junkie jalopy as it is for the souped-up sports car.
Most police usually have little sympathy for the sports car driver caught going at an outrageous speed, or doing swerving tactics that maybe befit a sports car but that can anyway be considered a hazard to traffic.
By-and-large, sports car drivers seem to end-up in one of three camps for portions of their driving time:
Legal
Quasi-legal
Illegal
The legal driving is usually when they sense that there’s a cop nearby, or when they are jammed-up in bumper to bumper traffic, or otherwise not in a viable situation to do anything other than pure legal driving.
The quasi-legal camp will push every law to the limit, whenever possible.
That off-ramp up ahead has a posted speed of 45 mph and is trying to advise drivers to watch out for the curve that might force your car off the road and into a ditch if you are going too fast. That’s really just a “challenge me” sign for the sports car driver. They want to see how much their tires squeal and the car will flow thunderously into the curve, vastly exceeding the recommended speed and the driver betting that no police will stop them for such a potential infraction.
The illegal camp goes beyond the limits of the law.
They are hopeful they won’t get caught. You’ve seen these drivers. They will try to stay out of the fast lane under the belief that it makes them an easier to see target by the police. Thus, they will go at high speeds in the slower lanes, figuring that the other cars they are nearly side swiping are acting as a kind of radar defensive shield. At every opportunity, they will blatantly break the law. Some do it without a care in the world and are flagrant as they do so. Others try to hide it and pretend that nobody official will notice their transgressions.
For those that want to push their sports car to the limits, there are places they can do so without putting the rest of the public in jeopardy.
Here in Southern California, we had a Porsche Experience Center open up.
It provides a 53-acre fun park for Porsche drivers. There’s a road handling course, and its only one of five worldwide that Porsche has established. Besides various road surfaces, there’s an Ice Hill which has a 7% slope that jets of water can soak down to make for a low friction surface, and they have a Kick Plate that is intended to induce a skid or spin, etc.
Admittedly, these closed course tracks are nice, but there are too few of them to be within easy access of all sports car owners, plus they often are for certain brands only, and worst of all for many sports car drivers it just isn’t fully as satisfying as going on the public roadways.
Going around and around in circles on a few miles long track is not the same as driving for dozens or hundreds of miles in your sports car. Some might also find that there’s the thrill of getting caught, which isn’t the case when driving on a closed track (usually, instead, it’s the “thrill” of guiding the sports car close into a death defying stunt).
Drivers Of Sports Cars
Some people hate sports cars and especially hate sports car drivers.
Those pesky and annoying sports car drivers think they are high and mighty.
They think they can squeeze in and out of traffic wherever they wish.
Egoistical. Maniac drivers. Scofflaws.
Even regulators at times will clamp down hard on sports cars.
An extra tax or fee can be a means to get some added dough out of those sports car owners that just must have their sports cars. When the sports car owners complain, they are told they should be happy that they still get a chance to drive their vaunted vehicles on our roads.
The emotional relationship between a sports car owner and their sports car can be as strong as say the personal ties between a dog owner and their pet dog. You’ve maybe seen a sports car owner that talks to their sports car.
They might meticulously clean their sports car. They keep it parked inside or perhaps have a special cover for their sports car. When they start the sports car, they let the engine rev up. Upon entering into an area that has lots of sharp pebbles, they will drive the car at exceedingly slow speeds to keep the rocks from bouncing up to scratch the paint job.
Tender. Loving. Care.
Sports Cars As AI Autonomous Vehicles
What does this have to do with AI self-driving driverless autonomous cars?
At the Cybernetic AI Self-Driving Car Institute, we are developing AI software for self-driving cars, and as part of that effort we’re also considering the role of sports cars in a future consisting of AI self-driving cars.
Let’s then consider what the future holds for sports cars.
There are some AI self-driving car pundits that are saying we’ll eventually have only and all AI self-driving cars on our roadways.
This nirvana will allow somehow that all traffic snarls of today to disappear, because presumably the AI self-driving cars will either all communicate with each other via V2V (vehicle to vehicle communication) or V2I (vehicle to infrastructure communication), and coordinate their movement. This will be done either by a master governmental traffic flow system, or by a negotiated peer-to-peer kind of approach.
Before I further consider the aforementioned scenario, please be aware that it is not going to be overnight that we suddenly find ourselves with exclusively AI self-driving cars on our roadways.
There are an estimated 200+ million conventional cars today in the United States alone. Those are not going to miraculously turn into AI self-driving cars. It will be many years before we do away with all of those conventional cars. Thus, the nirvana envisioned by some pundits is eons away in time and I’d say let’s not get ourselves too far ahead of the game.
But, suppose we did live in a world of only AI self-driving cars on our roadways. What does that signify for the sports car?
If you believe that AI self-driving cars will only be permitted to drive in a fully legal manner, it means that those sports car owners aren’t going to be able to drive in a quasi-legal manner anymore and for sure not in an illegal manner. Ouch, that hurts for those sports car lovers. It cuts out a chunk of the joy of having a sports car.
Well, maybe that aspect of being forced into legal driving mode will only apply if you are on the public roadways.
Would we as a society allow for the AI self-driving sports car to be able to drive “illegally” if it is on closed track that is outside the purview of the public roadways?
You would certainly think this would be a reasonable desire by sports car owners.
Look, they might say, I’ll have my AI self-driving sports car drive legally when on public roads, but when not on public roads the sky’s the limit.
Some might argue that this is bound to be a recipe for disaster.
Suppose the AI self-driving sports car somehow gets into sports driving mode while on a public roadway? How would we police this aspect to prevent the AI self-driving sports cars from doing so?
Maybe a sports car owner could hack their sports car to allow them to make it go into a sports car driving mode whenever they wished to do so. I am guessing there will be some opponents of sports car driving that will insist that no AI system can ever drive a car as though it is a sports car. In essence, prevent the capability to even exist, and then you remove the chances of anyone abusing the capability.
Will we have sports car owners that say you’ll remove their sports driving feature only over their dead body and after you’ve pried their cold- hardened hands off the steely grip of the sporty steering wheel?
Maybe.
By the way, you might find of interest my article about AI self-driving cars that will be driving illegally: https://aitrends.com/selfdrivingcars/illegal-driving-self-driving-cars/
Master Control Of Autonomous Cars
Continuing for a moment the perspective of an AI self-driving car only world, there’s another angle on the sports car aspects.
Suppose we do have some master control or maybe a peer-to-peer coordination system for traffic control.
One approach to sports cars might be to charge them a special fee to be able to use their sports car driving mode.
You can bring your AI self-driving sports car onto the freeway, and let’s say in the mornings when there’s a lot of traffic, your sports driving mode must be disabled. But, in the afternoon, when there is open traffic, you can make use of the sports driving mode, but only to the extent allowed by the master control system or the peer-to-peer coordinating system. You can do this for an extra charge.
You must pay the public for being allowed to do so. This could raise lots of money for other public causes, whether it be to keep our roadway infrastructure updated or for the homeless or other such causes.
Maybe sports car owners would find this acceptable and sufficient.
Some might be upset that they can’t use their sports car driving mode whenever they want.
There might be the public at large that sees this as an elitist kind of thing and though the sports car owner has to pay for the privilege, it seems like only the privileged are going to be able to do so. This will be a societal debate, certainly.
We need to clarify in this discussion what is meant by an AI self-driving car.
There are various levels of AI self-driving cars. The topmost level, a Level 5, consists of an AI self-driving car that has no human driver. The AI is intended to be the driver. Indeed, there is usually no provision for a human driver in a Level 5 self-driving car, including that there aren’t any pedals and there isn’t a steering wheel. For self-driving cars less than a Level 5, the self-driving car must contain a licensed human driver, and the human driver and the AI are co-sharing the driving task. This is something that provides numerous worrisome concerns.
See my article about the levels of AI self-driving cars: https://aitrends.com/selfdrivingcars/richter-scale-levels-self-driving-cars/
See my article about the dangers of co-sharing driving with humans and an AI self-driving car: https://aitrends.com/selfdrivingcars/human-back-up-drivers-for-ai-self-driving-cars/
See my article about who is taking responsibility when driving an AI self-driving car: https://aitrends.com/selfdrivingcars/responsibility-and-ai-self-driving-cars/
In the nirvana world of all AI self-driving cars, they are envisioned as all and only the Level 5 self-driving cars.
What about a world in which there are a mixture of conventional cars being driven by humans, and AI self-driving cars “less than” level 5 that are therefore co-sharing the driving task with humans, and the AI self-driving cars of a Level 5 that are being driven only by the AI?
Let’s consider the sports car aspect in that scenario, which is actually the more realistic scenario.
Gradual Emergence Of Level 5 Cars
As an aside, for a long time, we’re going to have a mixture just like the aforementioned. At first, there will be very few of the Level 5’s, there will be lots of conventional cars, and some of the “less than” Level 5’s.
Over many years, the mixture will gradually shift such that there will be less and less conventional cars, and more and more of the “less than” Level 5 self-driving cars, and a rising amount of Level 5 self-driving cars. The nirvana world will arrive, if it does, once that mixture becomes purely just Level 5 self-driving cars.
Well, in any case, you get onto the freeway and suppose you see some sports cars that are conventional sports cars and driven only by humans.
And, you also see some advanced sports cars that are AI self-driving cars but at the “less than” Level 5, and so those sports cars are at times being driven by the AI and at other times being driven by the human.
Plus, you see some advanced sports cars that are pure Level 5 and so only the AI is actually driving those sports cars.
Would it make sense to restrict the Level 5’s from not driving in a sports car driving kind of way?
If you do so, why then are you allowing the conventional sports car to be driven by a human in a sports car driving way, and the same for the instance of the “less than” Level 5? In other words, it seems like either they all get to drive as though they are driving a sports car, or none of them should.
I realize you might say that the Level 5 shouldn’t be able to drive in a sports car driving mode because it’s AI and not a human. But, this suggests a distrust that the AI cannot drive as well as a human can. If that’s the case, then the Level 5 self-driving car probably shouldn’t even be on the road. In other words, the AI should be able to drive an AI self-driving sports car, otherwise that vehicle shouldn’t be on the public roadways to begin with.
Which brings us to another key point, namely, many of the automakers and tech firms are right now focusing on getting the AI to drive a self-driving car in its most rudimentary driving means.
Thus, the AI won’t necessarily be able to leverage any special capabilities of the car itself. Thus, if you have a sports car that has this kind of AI, it likely won’t be able to take advantage naturally of the sports car speed, maneuverability, etc.
Sports Car Driving As Specific Expertise
Some consider this to be a so-called “edge” problem.
An edge problem is considered something that is not at the core of the problem that you are trying to solve. In the case of cars, the core problem in the view of many AI developers is to be able to have the AI drive a car in the most simplistic way possible, as though an average adult driver was driving the car. For a sports car, sure an average adult driver can drive it, but if you want to drive it well, and really exercise what it can do, you need to have “above average” driving skills or at least somewhat more specialized driving skills.
That’s what we are working on – developing the AI software for solving the edge problem of being able to drive a sports car as it was meant to be driven.
Let’s now revisit our earlier mixture of cars that are on the freeway.
Suppose we have conventional sports cars with human drivers, we have sports cars co-sharing driving of the humans with the AI “less than” Level 5’s, and we’ve got sports cars with the Level 5’s. Assume that the AI’s are all versed in sports car driving. Do we allow sport car driving to occur or do we not?
We’d likely assume that human drivers are going to do their usual legal/quasi-legal/illegal sports driving, doing so with their conventional sports cars.
The co-sharing driving creates a conundrum because we might have the AI that opts to drive like a sports car driver, but for which gets into a pickle and suddenly hands over the driving to the human driver, but perhaps the human driver at that point is not versed in sports car driving and cannot then deal with whatever dire situation has arisen.
Or, likewise, the human driver has gotten the sports car into a pickle and wants the AI to take over control, but the AI doesn’t know what to do given that the pickle is underway.
The Level 5 would almost seem like the better choice at being able to then drive the sports car, assuming that it is versed in doing so, since you’ve removed the co-sharing confusion, and you’ve removed the human driver entirely. That being said, what joy remains for the human occupant that is in the sports car of a Level 5?
I began this discussion by pointing out the various reasons that humans seem to love their sports cars.
If it’s a Level 5 self-driving sports car, and you the human have nothing to do with the actual driving, does that drain the joy from being in the sports car?
And, furthermore, if there are restrictions on when the sports car driving mode can actually be employed, will that further diminish the joy?
Perhaps, sports cars will no longer have much interest and therefore the only sports cars made will be either for competitive racing purposes or for collectors to put on display in a museum. Will society as a whole gradually lose its sense of image of what a sports car represents? Maybe over time, this whole maverick thing and the other attributes of owning and driving a sports car will wane.
Some say that people will always relish sports cars. It’s in our blood.
Furthermore, what better way to experience a sports car than by having an expert-level race car driver that will be your electronic chauffeur whenever you wish, 24 hours per day and 7 days per week.
Conclusion
Some of the sports car makers at first insisted they would never make a fully autonomous sports car, but have tended to back-down when they realized that in a future economy of ridesharing, wherein perhaps people don’t buy cars anymore, and use AI Level 5 self-driving cars as their primary means to get around, if there aren’t Level 5 sports cars then there’s nothing left but crumbs for the sports car makers.
Better to join the Level 5 club, than to be on the outside looking in.
Well, however this works out, I think there’s one credo that many of us will always have: I feel the need, the need for speed.
Go out and take your sports car for a spin, while you can.