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《如果汽车会飞》
when cars fly
The automobile has long been a symbol of everything great and everything terrible about America. On the one hand: freedom, individualism, power, speed. The taming of millions of miles of varied wildernesses through roads, then highways, then interstates. The capacity of American industry—Pittsburgh’s steel, Akron’s rubber, Detroit’s factories.
But on the other hand: gas-guzzling1) SUVs. Traffic and sprawl. The abandonment of mass transit. The decline of the Rust Belt2), the near-collapse of the Big Three automakers3) during the Great Recession of 2008, and the slow death of American manufacturing and blue-collar work.
Now, after four decades of doldrums4), things are looking up5) for American carmakers, in ways that would have been hard to imagine just 10 years ago. Yet the changes ahead won’t reconcile the great and the terrible of the past; instead, the conflicts between freedom and community, power and equity, will play out in new ways. Here’s what that future will look like.
Google, Tesla, and Uber—companies that didn’t even exist when Toyota introduced the Prius, in 1997—have become major players in the auto industry. Both Google and Tesla aim to introduce fully autonomous cars—that is, cars that drive themselves—within the next several years, and Uber recently founded an R&D center in Pittsburgh with an eye toward6) ushering in our driverless future.
Self-driving cars are expected to be much safer than human-driven ones. But even if the first robot cars hit the roads in the next few years, most of us probably won’t give up driving entirely for at least another 15 or 20 years. In the meantime, traditional cars will gradually take over certain aspects of driving.
Companies have been adding semiautonomous features to cars since the 1990s—things like adaptive cruise control, which uses sensors to adjust a car’s speed based on the traffic in front of it, and automated parallel parking. Some cars automatically stop—or at least slow down—if a driver doesn’t step on the brake in time to avoid a collision, and in certain 2017 Mercedes-Benz models, the driver will be able to change lanes simply by hitting the turn signal for two seconds (the car will take care of the rest). Within a few years, cars may be able to determine when an accident is likely and make adjustments to the cabin—moving seats, closing windows, retracting the steering wheel.
Even better than preparing for a crash, of course, is preventing one. Some vehicles emit warnings when they detect, via cameras and sensors, that a driver is getting drowsy. Future cars might take over for sleepy drivers—or automatically pull to the side of the road and shut down. Biometrics could aid this process. If a car has sensors that can measure a driver’s respiration and heart rate, it could shift into self-driving mode when a driver has a heart attack or passes out.
While traditional manufacturers slowly add semiautonomous features, Tesla is taking a more aggressive approach. Last year, an update to the software in certain Model S vehicles added the ability to operate via “autopilot7)”: The car mostly drives itself, but the driver can take over if, for example, the car attempts to exit the freeway unbidden—as it did during some runs soon after it was introduced last year. Each time a driver intervenes, Tesla registers the correction in its software, which is distributed across its fleet. The idea is that over time, the cars will get better at driving.
Tesla’s autopilot occupies a regulatory gray area, since updates to a car’s software don’t require the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s approval—though that could change as the agency rules catch up with technology. Ford or GM would likely never have put such an untested system into service, but Tesla’s tech-forward8) customers seem willing to take the risk, even if those of us who have to share the road with them would rather they didn’t.
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长期以来，汽车一直既代表了美国所有了不起的东西，又代表了美国所有糟糕的东西。一方面：它代表自由、个人主义、力量和速度。行驶在道路、公路、州际公路上，汽车征服了绵延数百万英里的各种荒野之地。它还代表着美国的工业产能——匹兹堡的钢铁、亚克朗市的橡胶、底特律的汽车工厂。
而另一方面导致的结果是：油老虎SUV车型出现；交通堵塞，城市无计划扩张；公共交通被抛弃；铁锈地带衰落；三大汽车制造商在2008年经济不景气时几近垮台，以及美国制造业和蓝领阶层逐渐消亡。
而现在，历经40年的消沉之后，对美国汽车制造商来说，局面又有了转机。在10年前，这都是难以想象的。然而，过去好的一面和坏的一面不会因为未来的变化而调和。相反，自由与集体、权力与公平间的冲突会以新的方式演绎。未来可能会是下面这样的。
谷歌、特斯拉、优步，这些在1997年丰田推出普锐斯这款车时根本就不存在的公司现在已经成为汽车工业的主角。谷歌和特斯拉的目标都是要在未来几年内推出全自动驾驶汽车，也就是会自己驾驶的汽车。优步公司近期在匹兹堡成立了研发中心，意图在未来的无人驾驶技术方面走在前沿。
自动驾驶的汽车预计要比人类驾驶的汽车安全得多。但是即便第一批机器人汽车能几年之内上路，我们大部分人很可能仍不会完全放弃自己开车，至少在此后15至20年内不会。与此同时，传统汽车会逐渐接管驾驶的某些方面。
自20世纪90年代以来，汽车制造商一直在给汽车增加半自动化功能，比如自适应巡航控制功能和自动平行泊车功能。自适应巡航控制技术利用感应器，根据前方的交通状况来调整汽车速度。如果驾驶员未能及时踩刹车以避免撞车，有些汽车会自动停车，起码会自动减速。在梅赛德斯-奔驰的某些2017款的车型中，驾驶员只需按住转向按钮两秒便能够进行变道(汽车会完成剩下的工作)。几年之内，汽车或许就能够判断什么时候可能发生事故，并对车舱进行调整——移动座位、关车窗、回撤方向盘。
防备相撞事故发生当然不错，但更好的还是要防止事故发生。有些车辆通过摄像头和传感器发现驾驶员昏昏欲睡时，会随即发出警报。未来汽车可能会代替瞌睡的驾驶人而自动驾驶，或是自动开到路边然后熄火。生物测定学能够为这一过程提供帮助。汽车如果装有能测量驾驶员呼吸和心率的传感器，当汽车驾驶员心脏病发作或晕厥时，它能够进入自动驾驶模式。
在传统汽车制造商缓慢增加半自动功能时，特斯拉采取的是一种更加激进的策略。在特斯拉去年的一次车载软件更新中，S款的一些车辆增加了通过“自动驾驶”进行操作的功能。车辆主要是靠自动驾驶，但驾驶员也可以控制方向盘，比如在汽车未经许可就试图驶离高速公路的情况下——去年在这一功能引入后不久，车辆在使用这一模式时就发生过这样的情况。驾驶员每进行一次干预，特斯拉就将纠错情况记录到配置在其系列车型的软件中。这么做的意图是，希望随着时间的推移，汽车会变得更加善于驾驶。
但是，特斯拉的自动驾驶技术处于监管的灰色区域，因为更新车辆软件不需要美国国家公路交通安全管理局的批准。不过随着该机构的法规跟上技术发展的脚步，这一局面也可能改变。福特或是通用汽车很可能永远也不会将这样一个未经测试的系统投入运营，但是特斯拉那些技术前卫的客户们似乎愿意冒这种风险，虽然我们中那些不得不跟他们共享道路的人宁愿他们不要这么做。
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文章摘自：《新东方英语》杂志2016年9月号
