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Jonathan Gitlin

Google

Google

For quite a lot of people, driving is a chore, something they have to do to get to work or the grocery store. And for those drivers, a car is just a tool. But for others, driving is something to be enjoyed. However, it's getting hard to be a responsible driving enthusiast. There are a number of factors at play here. For one thing, it is becoming more and more socially unacceptable to speed on roads. Cities nationwide are implementing 25mph speed limits, and the evidence coming in shows that these limits do in fact have a measurable effect on the number of pedestrian casualties. But even out of town, the open roads aren't so empty anymore.

That makes it frustrating for other drivers—who don't want to contend with Ricky Racer and his Miata pinned to their bumper for miles and miles—and frustrating for Ricky, who just wants to have some fun. So the prospect of a Sunday-morning drive through the country starts to become less and less appealing.

My favorite roads

At the same time, most of us have a road or two that lives in our memory. For me, it's my old Californian drive to work through Rancho Santa Fe and the epic back roads that shadowed the 5 as I headed toward La Jolla from North County. Even better was the "Californiaring," a triangular route of 26.7 miles (44.4km) that took you up Mt Palomar's 270-degree, hairpin-filled south face then down the faster-flowing east side before taking SR-76 back to start it all over again.

Back in the old days—probably before they even built South Grade—I reckon you could have persuaded the powers that be to let you close the roads for a Californian equivalent of the Targa Florio. A couple of hours from LA, you'd be guaranteed a young hotshot actor or three on the grid, and it could have the makings of a tradition.

In the 21st century, though, it seems implausible that you would be allowed to close 28 miles of public highway for a week to run a race where—let's be honest—the chance that someone could get really quite hurt is a possibility.

But I'm wondering if there's a solution on the way thanks to a combination of autonomous vehicles and racing sims. Now I know what you're thinking: autonomous vehicles are anathema to the driving enthusiast, taking over the driving completely and leaving the passengers to stare out the window as the scenery goes past. And for those people for whom driving is a chore (or something they can't do due to being blind or infirm), that's good.

Racing sims to the rescue?

But here's the thing. Once all those lidar-equipped vehicles I keep writing about finally start appearing on our roads, they're going to be going around, laser-scanning our favorite roads so we can drive them in racing video games. There's little doubt that this would work; Ford told us back in 2015 that its fleet of autonomous Ford Fusions had already scanned lots of NASCAR tracks and stadiums, in part to use that data in the simulators for its factory-backed racing program. (By now Ford may well have scanned all the NASCAR tracks and moved on to the IMSA road courses.) That means the Californiaring will soon exist as one or more 3D point clouds—all it needs is someone to drive around slowly, capturing the data.

From there it can't be beyond the wit of humankind to export that data into the mod-able racing platform of one's choice. After all, laser-scanned tracks are something the entire racing game industry is au fait with now. Obviously it's not quite as simple as just having a Lidar map. Studios like Turn 10, Codemasters, and Slightly Mad have to put in plenty of elbow grease to fill in all the visual detail and even things like different road surfaces (which will have different amounts of available grip). But for this kind of application I reckon people would put up with fewer graphical bells and whistles for a chance to find out just how fast their favorite route could be, devoid of oncoming traffic, errant pedestrians, and wildlife—not to mention John Q. Law. The technology allows me to drive Pikes Peak or Le Mans from the comfort of home, so this should also be doable.

Thinking even further out to a time when autonomous cars are far more prevalent, I could even see this going one further. Come up with what you think is the perfect sim run with your wheel or controller. Upload that telemetry/replay to your autonomous car, and ride it as a passenger. I actually think this could be even more terrifying than riding passenger in a car being driven beyond what you judge to be the driver's level of skill, but it's not so far removed from one of the proposals during Audi's last Urban Future Initiative, where one team proposed a "thrill mode" that would have your car drift (safely) on its way to work, road conditions permitting.

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