Decision time at the dawn of the automated car

The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers sent out a press release earlier this month in which they claim that by 2040 75% of the vehicles on the road will be autonomous.

As much as I love driving, I have to admit that I won't bemoan the death of the traffic jam.

I'll happily give up the crowded freeways and city streets if it means cheaper gas and abandoned back roads. I don't fear the automated car, because I don't anticipate that my legal ability to drive a non-automated car will go away--at least in my lifetime.

But, the dawn of the self-driving car seems like a good time for driving enthusiasts to ask a question that will shape the experience of driving for the sake of driving in the years to come: Is driving still about going faster?

Because if it is, and buyers of performance cars continue to accept more and more automation in the name of greater speed, we'll end up being automated out of the performance driving equation.

A dual-clutch automatic can shift faster than a human can shift—and in some cases it can shift before the driver even knows a shift is necessary. But when it comes to which is more enjoyable to actually operate, a real manual transmission wins every time.

Sure, it's cool to pretend you're an F1 star for an hour or so. But before long, you realize that shifting gears with the tip of your outstretched finger makes you look and feel ineffectual, sterile and utterly miserable. The little click that sounds from those plastic petals is the sound of everything vital in the driver's own character being erased.

But we've been talking about preferring conventional manual transmissions for years and they still aren't selling. They aren't even being offered for sale all that commonly.

Automakers would prefer to make just one transmission for each car. Though automatics are generally more expensive to build than manuals, making just one transmission is cheaper than making two, even if the one you make is the pricier one. Because automatics sell, and return better fuel-economy numbers, the automakers are working very hard to convince drivers that today's automatics are the product of “better thinking.”

We're told that those miserable little paddles make your car faster, and because to some, faster always means better. (It might also be that some car buyers and even some auto writers are now too lazy, or too old to enjoy operating a manual transmission, but let's pretend it isn't.) So, if we operate under the assumption that we made our left legs vestigial because the car does shifting faster and better, we should think about what we'll do when the car can do everything better.

Stanford University's fully automated Audi TT-S completed the Pike's Peak Hill Climb way back in 2010. While the TT-S didn't come close to challenging human drivers, it—or something else—will.

Computers are better at sensing, processing and acting on data than humans are. An autonomous car that can beat human racing drivers around a race track is inevitable.

So, again, when the car does everything better, where does the automation end? Steering? Braking?

Or do we decide that driving means more to us than just going fast?

If I were a race-car driver and I made my living setting fast laps, I'd take all the help I was allowed to have, plus anything I could sneak by the scrutineers.

But I'm not a race-car driver and I prefer a manual transmission. I know it's slower, and I don't care. My love for driving isn't derived from setting lap records or the knowledge that my car is faster than someone else's.

In fact, like most drivers, when I get behind the wheel of a fast car my abilities as a driver limit performance more than anything else. As my abilities improve, so does performance. Throughout the history of performance cars, enthusiast drivers have found that relationship rewarding.

There are dozens of archaic skills that people continue pursuing, even when everyone else decides they've found a better way. We didn't stop sailing at the advent of the powerboat. I'm told some people still ride horses.

There are hundreds of ways to catch fish, and most of them are easier than fly fishing. But, I enjoy the act of fly fishing. If the goal was just to catch all the fish in the river, I'd use dynamite and a huge net.

So far, the sales numbers suggest that for a good portion of the people that buy performance cars, going fast—or at least the idea of going fast—is the be all, end all of the performance-car experience. In other words, when these buyers are presented with dynamite, they start looking for a lighter.

As we abdicate the many component acts that comprise driving, cars will get faster. If we keep buying those cars, the automakers will keep automating the driver out equation. They'll have to do it to compete.

Because the arms race between the makers of high-performance cars is still necessarily focused on the old measures of outright performance, automation will continue until car-buyers show a preference for something else. A 0-60 time is far more easily communicated than a more subjective notion like steering feel.

For now, we can adjust and turn some of these systems off. But the trend seems to be toward a reduction in driver control.

So-called purists like me have been moaning about the death of the driving experience since we replaced horses. “Yeah, an electric starter is nice, but I'll crank my Tin Lizzy over like a real American, thank you very much.” “Sure, ABS is safer . . . if you're a communist!”

I'm certainly not advocating for a return to a world without traction control or ABS—they've both saved me before and I appreciate it. But, I'm sure to some readers, this is just more change-hating.

But as we continue to inch closer to full automation, the act of driving for its own sake will become increasingly irrelevant, and we should probably start thinking about what that means for car enthusiasts.

Because when 75 percent of the cars on the road are fully autonomous and all those great back roads are empty and unpatrolled, we shouldn't let them go to waste.

By Rory Carroll