Self-Driving Cars and Sex

As the world’s first self-driving cabs debut today in Singapore, it’s time to consider the bigger consequences.

Yes, a lot of drivers are eventually going to lose their jobs.

But also: a lot of day-rate hotels are eventually going to lose their customers. At least if the media has anything to say about it.

According to Neal Pollack at The Drive, dozens of articles started to appear in early May suggesting that, thanks to driverless cars, we’re naturally going to have more sex in cars. So he did a bit of digging. Turns out, every one of those articles cited the same expert: Barrie Kirk, the Executive Director of Canadian Automated Vehicles Centre of Excellence (CAVCOE).

“[For an interview] I said, when computers are doing the driving there will be more sex in cars. The reporter took that statement and built a whole article around it,” says Kirk. He wasn’t kidding.

A little inside baseball for you: As websites chase clicks, they’ll often find an article or a quote that’s “viral” and run with it, nuance be damned (see: our headline above). In follow-up stories, Kirk suggested that interviewers tried to get him to proffer the same idea. But it turns out the director is more interested in the “wonky” matters of self-driving cars (including potential labor strife, which we mentioned before).

So we should really look to another Canadian, Toronto Globe & Mail writer Andrew Clark, for a more nuanced take (and maybe not look to another Canadian, Crash director David Cronenberg, who made sex in cars both really disturbing and dull).

Last year, Clark wrote the article “Sex and the Self-Driving Car,” postulating that “automobiles and sex [already] have a complex, multifaceted relationship,” referring to automobiles as “erotic destinations” akin to Mount Kilimanjaro or the mile-high club. He also cited a study that suggested 36% of us are already doing it in cars.

While he predicts “Self-driving cars will ignite a sexual revolution at 40 km/h” (remember, he’s Canadian) and a new “baby boom,” he does offer one warning:

“Making it okay — nay safe — to make love in your automobile may kill the thrill. That has always been the primary attraction between sex and cars. You weren’t supposed to do it.”