Automobile versus slot car versus the autonomous vehicle

Abstract

The problem with early-nineteenth-century automobiles was that they were large, heavy and difficult to stop. So, in Britain, by the 1860s, Locomotive Acts or Red Flag Acts were introduced to deal with the danger they posed. Because of these Acts, self-propelled vehicles on British public roads were only allowed to travel if preceded by a man waving a red flag and blowing a horn. The result of these Acts, in addition to any saved lives, was that many British inventors turned their attention away from automobiles and worked instead on the development of railroads and trains. These Red Flag Laws were not repealed until 1896. In 1912, the American Lionel Corporation, an electrical novelties company founded in New York City some 12 years earlier, introduced the first ‘slot cars’ into its widely distributed catalogue. Using a rail not unlike that seen in toy train sets, Lionel’s slot car toy production continued for a few years, and other companies similarly experimented with these toys; however, almost 40 years went by before slot cars were manufactured with continuity. In 1957, the British Minimodels company, founded by Bertram Fred Francis, a tool maker and inventor, in 1947, converted its clockwork toy cars marketed in its ‘Scalex’ toy line, to run on electricity. With this, the now world-famous ‘Scalextric’ slot car range was launched. Many other companies followed suit and the motor vehicle capital of the world, the U.S.A., became the leading market for these toys – which found appeal worldwide with both children and adults. The 1960s and early 1970s saw the peak of slot car enthusiasm. Autonomous vehicles to many minds are a thing of the twenty-first century. But car manufacturers and inventors haddeveloped self-driving vehicle conceptswell beforeWorldWar Two. By the 1980s, autonomous vehicles of a kind we’d recognise today had come into being. In the U.S.A. legislation was introduced to encourage development of automated vehicles that could be integrated into existing road systems, and development of updated road systems that if introduced would support these vehicles even further. By the second decade of the twentyfirst century, self-driving vehicles were a global phenomenon and the majority of major auto manufacturers were exploring both the design and manufacturing of these vehicles and the systems of guidance, safety and control that could support them. Now, in 2023, along with the growing number of electric vehicles on our roads, it is possible to purchase a vehicle with some degree of driving autonomy. Countries such as Germany have introduced vehicles that don’t require driver supervision on motorways, and vehicle producers in other countries, and an increasing range of manufacturers, are offering vehicles for sale that can park themselves, steer themselves and decide on when they should brake to avoid a collision. Over the past few years, Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been used to write poetry and fiction. Some creative writers have naturally felt not only that the results of this kind of machine writing can be detected – and that these results are inferior to those produced by humans – but also that the challenge of such machine autonomy is a challenge to creative writing in a much bigger way. Other creative writers have imagined that AI might be incorporated into creative writing practice to produce new techniques, perhaps new genre, and have seen less a vision of impending calamity than one of impending change.