Ford Wants to Take Away The Joy of Off-Roading Too

Ford is working to put driverless vehicles on trails, because ruining the fun for off-road enthusiasts is a great goal. To be fair, Land Rover has been working on this same goal, so the two automakers — which have an interesting history together, like bitter former lovers — are competing to beat the other one to this goal.

Can someone just stop and ask if this is even a good idea? Fine, I will.

By making off-roading accessible to the unwashed masses, we’re risking some undesirable consequences. Some trails, like the famous Rubicon, already get so crowded you can’t really enjoy them. This tech could possibly make that worse. Sure, you get some idiots who know nothing about driving on trails and have a vehicle not up to the task still forging ahead, against all reason. Even more of these lovely individuals will flock to trails. They’ll probably want to hit the toughest ones possible, just to test out the limits of their cool new tech.

No thanks. I say make off-roading harder, not easier. Keep those barriers to entry high for this pastime. With more traffic, the natural beauty of these areas will probably decline. Some idiots will throw their garbage wherever, and leave other unspeakable things behind. I’ve seen this behavior firsthand on trails before, and I fear it will become far more common.

CarBuzz has all kinds of patent drawings for clever off-road autonomous drive tech. It’s cool, in a way, but just like Jurassic Park, someone should be asking if just because we can do something, should we? Don’t expect automakers to do that, because there’s serious money to be made, and bragging rights to be claimed.