A seatbelt that stops me dozing off at the wheel? Baaa humbug to that
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Version 0 of 1. The other day, I had an old-fashioned experience: I bought some lamb chops at a butcher's shop. It wasn't just that it was a slightly old-fashioned sort of food – a basis for a meal that's been around as long as I can remember, before all the burritos and wraps and sushi arrived (I promise this is not a metaphorical pro-Ukip tirade), back when spaghetti came only as bolognese or hoops, and pizzas were saucer-sized frozen frisbees in all the yellows and brick reds of a festering wound. And it wasn't just that I was buying it in an old-fashioned way – from an actual butcher's shop, which basically only sells meat, although they're cheating slightly by also having a cheese counter and a range of chutneys. But they're not cheating massively by also having an out-of-town location, a vast car park, a section for every other sort of food, as well as clothes, books, bank accounts, insurance, toys, inflatable swimming-pool accessories and probably actual houses, and bulk deals on lager that make it cost less in cash than in car depreciation caused by 20 slabs of Foster's ruining the suspension. I say "cheating"; it must be what everyone wants or we wouldn't go there. But this was a genuine old-fashioned butcher's shop, marred only by slightly higher prices and the pervasive self-consciousness about its continuing to exist that everything picturesque in Britain labours under. The aspect of the encounter I thought was most old-fashioned was that the butcher had to cut the chops from a larger piece of meat. I enjoyed watching this non-metaphorical act of butchery. Not because I delight in the dismembering of an adorable infant mammal – even if that's what I was into, this moment wouldn't have hit the spot as the meat just looked like a lump of food and was completely unevocative of a segment of formerly gambolling quadruped – but because of the bladework. Using a large dull steel knife, which turned out to be the sharpest grey thing since Douglas Hurd's hairdo, and occasionally aided by a swift clip of the cleaver, the butcher efficiently transformed the meat into chops without removing even one of his fingers. And his fingers, let's not forget, are basically made out of the same thing as the lamb. This process felt entirely safe, even though it was obviously dangerous. It didn't happen slowly and nervously, like the defusing of a bomb. It was matter-of-fact and quick. He knew he wasn't going to cut his fingers off and he didn't. It felt old-fashioned watching something potentially hazardous happen without it being surrounded by the paraphernalia of risk limitation. He didn't have to put on a mask or gloves, set a trip alarm that would go off if his skin was pierced, take a prophylactic dose of antibiotics, put the local A&E on standby or hand me a splatter shield. He just knew what he was doing. I needed this breath of historical air because I'd just read about Harken. Harken is a new sort of seatbelt being developed by some Spanish and Portuguese scientists which is designed to spot whether you might be dozing off behind the wheel and wake you up if you are. Meanwhile, researchers at Nottingham Trent University are working on something similar: an electrocardiogram sensor system that's woven into the fabric of car seats. This will set off an alarm if it thinks you're snoozing and put the vehicle into cruise control if you ignore it. The hope is that such devices will avert some of the 20% of road accidents thought to be caused by tiredness. I know that, at first glance, this sounds like an incontrovertibly good idea, but I don't like it at all. For one thing, these systems will definitely go wrong in ways that are incredibly annoying. For example, Harken is supposed actually to preempt drowsiness. As Jose Solaz, of the Biomechanics Institute in Valencia, says: "When people go into a state of fatigue or drowsiness, modifications appear in their breathing and heart rate." But this device "can monitor those variables and therefore warn the driver before the symptoms appear." So it knows you're feeling drowsy before you do. It wakes you up before you fall asleep, before you even know you're feeling sleepy. Anyone who has followed developments in car technology – who grasps that the primary function of an electric window is to break down when it's open, and that car alarms purely serve to wake up neighbours and alert distant thieves to the presence of an expensive vehicle – will realise that these contraptions are going to go off all the time. Only the most extreme and violent of heart palpitations will silence an over-zealous Harken's warning bleat. Lorry drivers will get so accustomed to it that, like a baby soothed by the noise of a dishwasher, they won't be able to drop off without the machine's reassuring klaxon. But even if they work properly, which I suppose they probably will after 10 years of irritation, they're an ominous development. Driving a car, like chopping meat with a cleaver, is a risky business. Awareness of that risk, and the skills and care it engenders, are what makes the process statistically safe: there is an onus on the driver to be competent. So, for God's sake, let's not have people who think they might fall asleep at the wheel getting behind it anyway because there's a machine that they reckon makes it OK. That's the sort of safety net on which people get garroted. I am still, by the way, in favour of driverless cars. If they develop as intended, the seatbelt snooze alarm will be even more of a technological cul-de-sac than the fax machine. I've used dodgy minicabs in my day, ignoring the driver's cidery breath and averting my eye from the heritage tax disc, so I'd be a hypocrite if I demurred at a robot taking the wheel. And, as an incompetent myself, I'm all for abdication of responsibility. But you've got to abdicate the power at the same time, which is what happens if a computer is directing the car. In contrast, giving an exhausted human the illusion of consequence-free power strikes me as a perverse approach to reducing road deaths. |