Robot, Take the Wheel, Jason Torchinsky
Robot, Take the Wheel, Jason Torchinsky
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Robot, Take the Wheel
The Road to Autonomous Cars and the Lost Art of Driving

Author: Jason Torchinsky, Beau Boeckmann

Narrator: Roger Wayne

Unabridged: 5 hr 23 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 08/20/2019

Synopsis

Self-driving cars sound fantastical and futuristic and yet they'll soon be on every street in America. Whether it's Tesla's Autopilot, Google's Waymo, Mercedes's Distronic, or Uber's modified Volvos, companies around the world are developing autonomous cars. But why? And what will they mean for the auto industry and humanity at large?

In Robot, Take the Wheel, famed automotive expert Jason Torchinsky gives a colorful account of the development of autonomous vehicles and their likely implications. Torchinsky encourages us to think of self-driving cars as an entirely new machine, something beyond cars as we understand them today. He considers how humans will get along with these robots that will take over our cars' jobs, what they will look like, what sorts of jobs they may do, what we can expect of them, how they should act, ethically, how we can trick them and have fun with them, and how we can make sure there's still a place for those of us who love to drive, especially with a manual transmission.

This vibrant volume brims with insider information. It explores what's ahead and considers what we can do now to shape the automated future.

About Jason Torchinsky

Jason Torchinsky is the senior editor of Jalopnik, a cutting-edge news and opinion website about cars and technology, and has written for a wealth of other publications such as Boing Boing, Make, and Mother Jones. Torchinsky is a producer of Jay Leno's Garage, which he's guest starred on, and the star of his own show, Jason Drives, which features Torchinsky driving obscure cars and has had millions of views on social media. Torchinsky is also a stand-up comedian, an artist whose work has exhibited around the world, and the author of Robot, Take the Wheel: The Road to Autonomous Cars and the Lost Art of Driving. Torchinsky lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Antonia on January 01, 2020

I came across this book while checking out the new nonfictions at my library. There were two copies of the book and the title caught my eye so I took it home and am super glad I did!! First off, I LOVE the flow of this book and how it was written. It felt like peering into the brain of a dorky mecha......more

Goodreads review by Marcelo on December 08, 2019

Great book for a niche audience. If you're a car history buff, this is great. If you just like cars, you will not get the jokes. If you don't like cars, you will find this super boring.......more

Goodreads review by Trevor on September 20, 2020

If you’ve ever had a friend that on the surface was pretty goofy, but if you stop and really listen to what they’re saying you realize they’re making excellent points. That’s this book! This isn’t an engineering analysis of autonomous driving. Imagine you had a conversation with someone who is very......more

Goodreads review by Dan on February 13, 2023

I enjoyed the first half of the book, which consisted of a history of robotic vehicles (dating back to a design by Leonardo Da Vinci) and an amusing but accurate rant about the limitations of present-day "autopilot" systems. The remainder of the book focused mostly on the downsides of the full self-d......more

Goodreads review by BookLover on August 06, 2020

I loved this book. I'm definitely not "in the know" about cars, but I am curious about the idea of self-driving/autonomous ones. The author's voice made this an easy read--I learned a ton and also came out with lots of ethical questions to ponder, which I've recently been discussing with lots of fri......more

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