Have you heard the one about how autonomous cars are going to cause rampant motion sickness? Perhaps you read it in the ever-so-reputable Washington Post? Or maybe that piece from the vigilant reporters at CNBC? Are you sure you didn’t come across it while digesting the dozens of other rags covering the story?

As the resident poindexter who plows through whatever my daily Google alert for *autonomous or self-driving* points me to, I can confirm that this motion sickness “study” from the University Of Michigan rivaled Delphi’s record-setting coast-to-coast autonomous trip for sheer volume of news coverage. That’s bad. Like, reporting-on-the-limitations-of-cancer-cures-because-some-people-would-be-afraid-of-the-vaccination-needle bad.

The reasons yours truly is writing a rebuttal to the study are three-fold:

The study miscommunicates itself. The journalists who picked up on the study further miscommunicated the miscommunication. Miscommunication is arguably the greatest enemy of all things good in the world, including autonomous vehicle technology.

Normally, I’d be above this. I understand many universities seem to have an annual quota of idiotic studies they need to conduct, and I can accept that journalists, in receiving news of said idiotic studies, have the compulsion to distribute it while lacking the expertise to question it. But the nuance of this particular study’s life in the public eye is a troubling indicator of just how easily we can screw up our nation’s future without even realizing it.

The Story

The most accurate synopsis of the study I can provide is as follows:

The University Of Michigan has completed a survey indicating that 6–10% of autonomous car passengers could regularly experience some level of motion sickness, as being freed from the obligation of driving may elicit behaviors that are known to produce motion sickness (e.g., reading).

Now, let’s hear that information echoed by our beloved media muppets in a more tweetable fashion:

“One out of every 10 people say they would likely get carsick in a driverless auto” (No one said that, nor did the study ask them such a question.) “If You Have Motion Sickness, A Self-Driving Car Is Not For You” (If you get severe motion sickness, then riding in any vehicle is not for you. You probably know that already because you were the kid who barfed all over your classmates on the field trip to Six Flags.) “Want A Self-Driving Car? Stock Up On The Dramamine” (Ooh, zing! The joke was worth it. Hey, we should fabricate all news for the sake of funny headlines!)

The public relies on headlines and sound bites to inform them on topics which they have little inherent knowledge of or interest in studying. As you can see from the above clickbait drivel, what we have done here is misinformed the public. And unfortunately, it will be that misinformed public who either accelerates or retards technological progress. Ergo, shitty journalism alters the path of humanity in the name of selling banner ads.

Bad Research

The University Of Michigan is an inherent authority on autonomous cars, due in no small part to the financial support they’ve received from public and private entities to build an entire city for the sheer purpose of testing self-driving vehicles. So, when UM releases a study with said technology’s name attached to it, we’ve every reason to listen.

It would help, then, if they’d actually leveraged their research in the field of autonomous technology when conducting this study. They didn’t. In fact, they didn’t drive research subjects for a single inch in any autonomous car.

What they did instead — Michael Sivak and Brandon Schoettle of UMTRI, specifically — was posit the most banal statement you can imagine, then take the unnecessary step of studying said banality, and then select a laughably inferior and short-sighted method for experimentation. Someone please tell me these are a couple of genius teenagers who got drunk on Peach Schnapps one night and blew off their chemistry finals to work on this… because it’s a joke.

The hypothesis (I assume, since UM made it very difficult to find anything beyond the Abstract) is that a) motion sickness is a known issue for about 5% to 10% of the population, and b) motion sickness in cars primarily occurs when you’re not controlling the vehicle, therefore c) more people will suffer from motion sickness in autonomous cars because the role that grants “immunity” from car sickness — the driving position — is no longer an option. Cool, I agree. Everyone agrees. File it under “the sky is blue.” But definitely don’t file it under “autonomous car issues”, because it’s the same damn issue for any transportation solution that shifts drivers to passengers. Ride sharing? Increase in motion sickness. Buses? Motion sickness. Space shuttles? Yeah. The self-driving technology of the vehicle is of absolutely no consequence to this hypothesis… which leads me to #2. Holy shit, they actually decided to study the hypothesis. I thought we all agreed the sky was blue… no? Okay, so what’ll it be if you’re not willing to actually use autonomous cars then? Strapping electrodes to passengers in NYC taxis? Installing an accelerometer in an Uber and mapping it to what little we actually understand about motion sickness? After all, what we’re looking for here is the effect of being a passenger in a car where you are free to do something other than drive… and there are a dozen decent ways to study this theory. Oh, what’s that? You decided instead to simply send a survey out to folks, asking them what they’d do with their free time in an autonomous car? Wow. You could’ve studied their actual behavior in taxis and Ubers, but I suppose asking them to ponder the equivalent of “what are you going to eat for breakfast 10 years from now?” is another way to get the job done. Plus, you don’t actually have to leave your desk to conduct the research. That’s always the mark of taxpayer money well spent.

So that’s what happened. UM asked people what they’d do in a car they don’t have to pilot, and a good portion of them imagined behaviors which often incite motion sickness, such as reading. People say they are going to read, and reading begets motion sickness, therefore doing things that make you carsick will make you carsick. One Nobel Prize, comin’ up.

Had to pull this from one of the more respectable news articles, since UM hasn’t posted the actual study under their Publications section.

Worse Journalism

At the top of this post, I listed about twenty news outlets who distributed and opined on the findings of the UM survey. Of those twenty articles:

Number who provided a frame of reference by reporting the percentage of Americans who currently suffer car sickness: 0

Number who released the actual UM study in its entirety: 0

Number who editorialized a counterpoint or critique of the study: 0

I don’t think it’s unfair to bundle these bullets beneath the umbrella of “journalistic integrity”… and the lot of ‘em failed to put a single point on the board. Listen: I know journalists. Journalists are friends of mine. And you, sirs and madams, are no journalists.

Self-driving vehicles purport to be the second coming of the American automotive revolution. I’m certain you reporters know this, because most of you looped some variation of that statement into these very articles. So, if you’re aware that your poorly-researched article goes against the grain of a movement that is trying to build trust and advocacy in the public eye, yet you steam ahead with publishing your poorly-researched article anyway, then what does that make you? A fear-monger? A mudslinger? A person who has no right whatsoever to complain about companies laying off journalists?

Again, I go back to the cancer reference, which a good number of readers may have thought was hyperbolic. I’ve written quite a bit about how important autonomous vehicles are to America’s future. This is serious stuff. To drag it down in a public forum with such an irrelevant point — a point blown entirely out of proportion by some reporters here — is to hinder social progress. But hey, it’s not like we can attribute their bullshit articles to actual vehicular deaths which will have been preventable by an earlier launch of autonomous vehicles to a more accepting public. I know, I know… nobody wants to think about the future. Just keep scrambling for that paycheck. Your benefit is surely unrelated to other people’s suffering.

Conclusion

Is there anything of value to take away from this study? I’ll admit that the UM survey did actually try to offer up recommendations to battle the impending problem of motion sickness in autonomous transit solutions (read: any mass transit solution), but those recommendations were also short-sighted. Let me tell you what is actually going to happen: the percentage of the population who experiences car sickness is not going to increase. In fact, it could very well drop. Here’s why:

A. You’ll prevent it yourself. Do you get a bit carsick when you read, like I do? I bet you solve it the way I solve it: by not reading. I can’t think of too many people who would argue against a new transportation mode that makes it hard for them to read, in favor of retaining the old transportation mode… which… made it impossible to read. Right.

B. The driving software will prevent it. Do you know what a limo stop is? Limo drivers do. It’s a braking technique used to ease in and out of the inertia of stopping a vehicle — and by extension, your body. Limo drivers do this because they know their passengers feel some degree of nausea whenever a strong gravitational force pulls them in the opposite direction their body was prepared for. Good drivers have a butt sensor for this kind of thing, which is why you feel more comfortable as a passenger in your dad’s car than in your grandma’s, or your 17-year-old nephew’s. Sebastian Thrun has already built this level of skill into Google’s driving technology, and rest assured that when autonomous cars hit the market, they’ll drive like a dream, and you won’t feel anything like the queasy thrill ride that is your nana’s no-coasting-allowed technique.

C. In-cabin features will prevent it. The two aforementioned solutions will likely cover 95% of the potential problem with being a passenger in a car, but a few features come to mind that could serve double or triple duty as creature comforts to consumers. UM suggested “no swivel seats or backwards-facing seats” (like those on the Mercedes F 015 concept), which is easy enough, but we might also find a solution in seats resting on a gimbal, or seats that anticipate g-forces and compensate to maintain your body’s expectations. Speaking of expectations, turn signals on the inside of the vehicle could be a welcome addition to those who are generally wary of letting a machine guide them around town; for those susceptible to car sickness, this prior warning helps to ease their experience as well. And what of this “reading” we’ve been demonizing? Surely we could see some technology emerge to make reading in a car easier… I mean, I could go at this all day, but it’s all speculation until we start actually funding autonomous cars to the point where we can test this stuff out. Got any ideas as to how we could drive this “funding”? Perhaps we could start by not disseminating misinformation?

Well, sure… but then, what would we have left to tweet?