Easy non-rider?

I'm not much of a motorcycle aficionado, but on behalf of a client, I do pay a fair amount of attention to what's happening with autonomous vehicles. (Every two weeks, I get to pretend I'm an electrical engineer and blog about something embedded systems- related. Because my client is both a geek and a car buff, one of my fallback topics is self-driving cars and trucks.) So I'm surprised I missed the story from a while back about BMW's forays into self-driving motorcycles.

Autonomous cars and trucks I get. It may still take a while before they work well enough to put them on the road at any scale - there are still problems dealing with unpredictable behaviors and left-hand turns (which, admittedly, humans have a hard time navigating as well) - but come they will. And it's easy for me to imagine that at some point in my life, I'll schedule an Uber that doesn't have a driver. Don't know if I'd be comfortable driving riding on a long-haul turnpike trek, but to buzz around time. Sure. 

Trucks I can envision barreling down the highway. Wasn't there a made-for-TV movie back in the wayback in which a driver-less semi torments poor Dennis Weaver, chugging along in his tiny little car? Yes! It was Duel, and, okay, the sitch was that the driver wasn't seen, not entirely absent. Still, the menacing truck seemed driverless, and surely this film was something of a precursor of the truckerless trucks, no? 10-4, good buddy. 

But a riderless motorcycle? Huh?

At present, this vehicle is just for research purpose, I guess to refine the assistive technology that they'll put in bikes to do what assistive technology does in cars: maintain speed, automatically brake when there's a hazard ahead, straighten out drift. 

A totally self-driving motorcycle? I just don't get it. 

If part of the American Myth takes place behind the wheel, an equal part of the American Myth takes place astride a Triumph, an Indian, a Harley.

I mean, how threatening would it be if they had to remake a Wild One in which a flock of empty bikes went roaring into town? Would they still be capable of scaring the bejesus out of the good, conservative townspeople? 

I think not.

It just wouldn't pack much of a punch.

And could Mildred ask Johnny's bike "what are you rebelling against?" And would Johnny's bike mumble its answer: "Whadda you got?"

How does it work? Not well, I'm afraid.

And how does "Born to Be Wild" square with a bike that doesn't have a human attached to it? What's so born to be wild-like about a robot-controlled motorcycle? No true nature's child onboard.

Easy Rider, that gem of a period piece, wouldn't have had quite the same impact if, rather than have outlaws Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda getting their motors runnin', headin' out on the highway, it was just the bikes. Maybe Jack Nicholson would've been along for the ride, maybe not. Probably not. And would it have been as dramatic if the violent, anti-hippie RWNJs who killed Dennis, Peter, and Jack were just gunning for the tires, or bashing in the gas tanks of some empty bikes, rather than shooting Dennis and Peter to kill and bludgeoning Jack to death?

No, no, a thousand times no.

Autonomous motorcycles 

I don't think so.