Another Start

by John Reblin

It is getting to be an exciting time in the motorcycle rights movement. Another term, another legislative agenda. Along with that, I am thinking of new things for the Highway Safety Committee and quantities of things to get. The time is now to act on what you believe and support.

While writing this my thoughts are also straying to spending some quality time with the Little Flower. Our time together gets assaulted by other demands like work, extended family and of course ABATE of Wisconsin. I have tried to keep all those priorities in check. One thing we enjoy doing is going to the movies, getting that tub of popcorn, along with a mega gulp soda to share and lose ourselves in the action of the screen.

The local paper had an article of the top movies to see this fall and I went through and picked a couple that caught my eye. One that I noticed and heard some decent reviews on was First Man. It is the backstory of Neil Armstrong and the Apollo mission to the moon. Many of us are of the age, growing up in the 60’s, remembering that night in 1969 when man stepped on the moon for the first time. We thought as a country we could do anything.

It took a lot of work to get there, trying things that were never done before. The courage of those in the space craft trusting the designers, engineers and the builders that it would not explode on takeoff. Once up in space they then had to trust that they could safely bring them home. But it was something that all agreed was possible. Thankfully it all worked. There were a few setbacks, that included some loss of life. But the knowledge gained from all those missions changed our future.

Fast forward now to a new century. It seems technology is moving at a furious pace. We are landing probes on asteroids, reaching out to far away planets and sending small vehicles to send back video. Exploring our boundaries, learning more and more of our long ago past, and maybe looking into our future.

Federally, we are now allowing autonomous vehicles (AV) on our roads, the state and federal government is saying this is the future to get around our roads. In the past when we tested modes of transportation, the risk was there and those testing knew that, hey, I might be severely hurt of even die, but this is something I want to do, to be part of this process of learning, of accomplishment.

In crash tests, we have seen the commercials on TV of dummies filled with sensors, telling the auto manufacturers what was going on in a crash. Now the other users of the road, you and me, are becoming the “crash test dummies” – as you are out on the road on your motorcycle, and that sensor on the AV does not see you and runs into you, or when you are walking on the side of the street because you ran out of gas, or even just pulling over to change a flat tire on your car. Is that AV following you going to “see you”. Is that AV going to stay in its lane as it approaches you, or will a deer jumping in its path going to cause it to swerve. Will we be able to trust those computers and cameras along with radar, lidar and everything else going on to make the right decision to save our lives?

Wisconsin is joining the technology of the autonomous vehicles with truck platooning. We in ABATE of WI., and others, have talked about this in the past. Multiple trucks going down the freeway, one driver in control of the line of trucks or platoon. We cannot let our state and others allow road users to become the crash test dummies for these vehicles. Now is the time to push back on these road users, to protect ourselves, and not be the crash test dummies that Wisconsin and other states are asking us to be.

Sure, they have a backup plan to protect us the road users. They will have someone watching out ready to take over the controls if there is an issue. I picture somewhere a 20 some year old, maybe smoking a Marlboro, some empty cans of Mountain Dew lying about watching a screen, either in the vehicle or in a remote location, ready to save our lives. Hopefully he or she will be paying attention, not checking out a video, or staring off in the trees, and will have a good Wifi connection to avert the danger.

As we move forward this upcoming legislative year we all need to be one voice, saying we want these vehicles to be able to see all road users and to be able to respond to them safely before being allowed on the road, and not allowing us to be part of the testing process.

John