Wanna go for a spin in that fancy car and earn some cash?
Some people collect stamps, my son Mert and his wife Sheila collect experiences as research subjects in the greater Detroit area: the original automotive development arena for the country. Car designers have to test their cars, first in the lab and in contained testing grounds and then on the street.
Years ago, Sheila test drove a car with a camera that showed traffic behind the car. She had to tell the researchers riding in the back which side of the car she saw traffic. Round and round a loop of freeway she drove as the researchers turned the camera off and on, varied its angle and perspective to assess the best view.
The initial anxiety of working with a new driver was followed with the monotony of the minutiae of testing. So tedious. One of the researchers fell asleep. With few cars on the road at the time and experiencing the bravado of a young driver, Sheila’s foot pressed further and further down.
The now wide awake researcher gasped as the speedometer hit 90. He begged her, “Please slow down a bit.” He still paid her around $100 for her time.
Driving too fast never was not an issue when Mert agreed to test drive the $100,000 Volvo of the future on the company’s testing ground. He wasn’t in control. The car was. The developer explained how to program the self-driving car’s distance to the car in front of him and advised Mert, “You have to touch the steering wheel every 10 seconds.”
Then for $25 per hour Mert “drove.”
“It was rather fun to drive a $100,000 car without the use of hands or feet when turning a corner on the highway. I just had to set my distance, let go. … and touch the steering wheel intermittently,” he said. The car set the speed, decided when it needed change lanes to avoid tailgaters and kept a safe distance from any cars in front of it.
Being a test driver hardly fits Mert’s usual transportation profile. He rides city buses and drives a company car on a special assignments. Another driving experience tested the capacity of cars to deal with tailgaters. “It was kind of weird (for a driving test,) I was cautioned to leave my hands off the wheel lest it hurt my hands,” he recalled. So he rode/drove along watching the car slowing down and leaving one lane for another in order to let a tailgater go ahead.”
Perhaps his low driving time influenced his experience during a simulated study inside a Honda. “I experienced nausea from speeding along a virtual highway that never ended,” he said with a grimace. In spite of the side effect he says he came away from that research time having learned a technique for dealing with tailgaters when he does drive.
Paid to learn, paid to test drive prototypes of high end cars, not bad for some serious pocket change. Plus, shades of the futuristic car, KITT, in the old TV show “The Knight Rider,” he has also dealt with intelligent bossy cars.
“I have driven a car that could detect traffic lights that were about to change and the car told me to speed up or slow down in order to get through the intersection. Or the car would tell me to stop to avoid arrest.” Not that that was ever an issue. As he explained, “I didn’t have to worry about the police; it was a test track.”
Beyond their collective experiences in automotive research, the two have participated in medical and psychological studies. More about those another time.