AI is coming for all of us. Not necessarily in an apocalyptic world like “The Terminator” or “The Matrix,” but by stealing jobs from truck drivers, astronauts, and even Jalopnik writers (despite what I read in the comments, I assure you we’re all human beings — at least, for now). Not even drag racers are safe, thanks to a launch control system GM patented that not only automates the launch process, but even reads the countdown Christmas tree to time a perfect launch.
Patents can be wordy and cumbersome to read, but Road & Track sums this one up nicely. Some cars already have launch control systems, which can get you off the line as quickly as possible with the perfect balance of power and traction. Pair those systems with the cameras being used in cars today and the rest is a simple matter of programming.
The potential future tech uses the car’s cameras to recognize the Christmas tree lights at a drag strip, and a prompt instructs the driver to activate launch control. This part works like normal, with the driver pressing the gas and brake pedals simultaneously. Once launch control is engaged, the driver removes their feet from the pedals, and the car takes over. It doesn’t just use its onboard cameras to watch the lights and go on green, it initiates the launch process before the light is green, ensuring the car begins to move precisely when it’s supposed to without red-lighting or launching too early. This is exactly the way I learned to do it, but a computer is going to be far more precise than my feet. I’m only human.
But why though?
Automatic drag strip launch control is a fine technological achievement. It also completely misses the point of what racing is all about: human drivers testing their skill against one another. Drag racing doesn’t have the braking or handling challenges of a road course or rally stage, but it still requires skill to reduce your reaction time and execute even a near-perfect launch. If you take that out of the equation by automating the entire process, what’s left? Not steering into the wall? In a production car, that takes even less skill than driving down the highway. (Top Fuel dragsters and Funny Cars are a completely different story. Mad respect to them.)
Does anyone really want autonomous racing? I sure don’t. In theory, a machine can always put down the perfect lap, time after time. The only time it gets exciting is when the programming goes wrong, and it steers straight into a wall. People already complain that Formula 1 is boring. It takes extraordinary driver talent to race at those speeds, but the cars are so good, so reliable, and so evenly matched that there’s little difference between them. Take the driver out of the car, and it’s nothing but a competition of technology. If I want to see that, I’d rather watch BattleBots. It’s much more fun, and you get to watch them completely destroy each other.
I have never driven a perfect lap, and I never will. Perfection itself doesn’t matter. It’s the pursuit of perfection that matters. Striving to do better than we ever have before is rewarding for its own sake. It’s also part of what makes us human. So I’ll leave GM’s drag strip launch control turned off and drop the clutch myself. I don’t care that I’ll run a slower time than the fully automated machine. As a certain James Bond villain once said, “There’s no point in living if you can’t feel alive.”
