What is it about?
This article explores interactions between drivers, cars and their surroundings. It uses theorist Don Ihde’s four human–technology relations – embodiment, hermeneutic, alterity and background – to analyse the ways in which human–car relationships develop through the process of driving. The aim is to consider how human-car relations, and also human relations with the surrounding world, change as cars become increasingly able to drive themselves.
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Why is it important?
Careful and detailed considerations of relations between humans, cars and their surroundings are important because in autonomous and semi-autonomous cars the connection between driver and car, process of driving and surrounding environment is disrupted. This may not be an issue when all vehicles on roads are self-driving from starting point to destination; however, the transition phase, where cars can only self-drive on certain roads, and share all roads with traditional vehicles and human drivers, is more complex.
Perspectives
I hope this article explains the complexity of driver-car relations with increasing levels of automation well. The next phase is to analyse human-car relations more broadly, to consider how other road users and pedestrians "read" drivers and cars currently, but also as increasingly autonomous cars are encountered on road systems.
Eleanor Sandry
Curtin University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Automation and human relations with the private vehicle: from automobiles to autonomous cars, Media International Australia, November 2017, SAGE Publications,
DOI: 10.1177/1329878x17737644.
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