A common practice for getting your kids to fall asleep is driving them around the block for a couple of minutes. It seems that this practice is inadvertently being executed on the engineers of Ford who are currently testing the brand’s autonomous driving system.
According to a report by Bloomberg, the engineers who are meant to be supervising the system are dozing off to sleep. The testing period is meant to take place over a long period of time and the company has resorted to installing bells, buzzers, warning lights, vibrating seats and shaking steering wheels but to no avail.
Ford’s product development chief Raj Nair said that the engineers are finding the ride so smooth that the passengers were just lulled off to sleep and struggled to stay awake. Nair credits this issue on the trust that engineers have developed towards the technology which in turn results in them not feeling the need to pay attention.
As funny as this situation sounds, Ford admits that this opens up a new issue for the autonomous driving system which is scheduled to hit the roads in 2021. To completely remove the factor of human error from the equation, it will remove controls such as the steering wheel and pedals which is much unlike Audi and GM who will be leaving these controls in their cars.
