Car That Drives Itself – A Six Hats Perspective

While writing posts for the article The Car That Drives Itself, I have been wondering about all possible reactions to a topic like this. Then I realized that this is a great example to illustrate the idea of Edward de Bono’s Six Hats.

If you had six people wearing the six different hats sitting in a room and talking about this idea, what would they be saying?

If you were wearing a White Hat, you would think about the facts.

There are tremendous advances in Robotics and Automation, and safety features in cars today. Traffic congestion causes delays, time wastage and can be frustrating. Tired and bad drivers cause a lot of accidents. Cars on autopliot could potentially open up many ways to catch up on other things while driving.

A Red Hatter would react emotionally.

That is a scary thought because if the car starts driving itself, then I won’t have any control! But being able to sleep while driving sounds exciting!

A Black Hat would only see the dark side.

How can that be safe? Even if this can be implemented, it is way too complicated and way too expensive. In the end, no one will buy it.

Wearing a Yellow Hat would mean that you see it optimistically.

It is complicated, but exciting. Most likely, this can be made to work over time. Cost will come down eventually.

A Green Hat would be thinking of creative ways to solve the problems to make this a reality.

If we break this up into small pieces and solve it part by part it can be done. We can have special freeways. All we need are some new protocols for the cars to talk to each other. We can use super safe rubberised exterior for minimal damage and risk due to collisions. Driving will be much less frustrating.

The calm Blue Hat would be listening to everyone and thinking…

This is a new idea. There are a lot of benefits, risks, costs and many other considerations related to deployment. The way to enhance our understanding of this topic is to look at all aspects of it and discuss them one at a time, without getting bogged down by any one point. There are many challenges and potentials. We have to put our heads together and see what’s possible here.

What hat are YOU wearing?

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