Pete's Notebook

There was the time I went to the Targa Florio and was strolling by a restaurant in the night-dark streets of Palermo just as the reigning world champion popped out. My companion, brasher than I, blurted, “Hey, Phil, can we talk to you?”

“Ya,” replied the reigning world champion, and he stopped in his headlong rush and stood there with us, talking. He told us about the 44-mile mountain road circuit and the Ferrari sports racer and how his throttle had stuck and he went over the edge into “a bean field,” as I remember he called it.

The reigning world F1 freakin’ champion chatting amiably with two utter strangers, just fans, on a spring evening on a sidewalk in Sicily.

That was the first time I’d spoken to him, but not the first time I’d seen him in person. That happened probably two years earlier at Sebring. Midway through a hot Florida afternoon he finished a driving stint, climbed out drenched in sweat and went to a corner of the pit stall, where he slumped to the ground, back against cinder blocks, and lifted a half-gallon glass jug of orange juice.

At that instant a man with a microphone bustled in, thrust it out and asked one of those dumb man-with-a-microphone questions.

I was close enough to see Phil’s eye measure him up and down. Then he tilted his head back and drained the jug, drained it in one long, throat-pulsing swallow, taking his sweet time, draining it of every orange drop. Finally he wiped his sweaty face with the sleeve of his pale blue driving suit. Then, only then, he began his response to the question.

First things first. I admired Phil Hill for that, and for many other things. No nonsense. No pretense. A straightforward man who raced because he was a racer, just that, and thereby kept the whole thing straight in my mind.

Straightforward, but not simple. Others knew him better than I and have written eloquently about his complexity, but I was able at least to experience some of his independence of thought. One time, long after his racing days, my wife and I went to interview him at Hill and Vaughn, his highly regarded classic car restoration shop.

Leaning back in his classic old desk chair, trying to look at ease but fidgeting continually, swinging back and forth, waving his arms, talking a torrent, he told us many things, but one stands out now in my mind.

Kids today, he said with consternation, are so darn safety-minded. Why, when he takes young people for a ride in some wonderful old car, they look around and complain there aren’t any seat belts! He was genuinely puzzled.

I understood perfectly. I watched this man racing when racing was not all about depending on technology for survival, but yourself. Yes, drivers worried about injury and death—so did we passionate onlookers—but the defense measure was to race with intelligence and vigilance and care. Just like flying and motorcycling and shooting, other activities I enjoy precisely because the self-reliance factor is so high.

On another occasion, Phil went on a press trip to Mexico and he brought a knife. A group of us journos were walking along with him through a crowded city street when conversation turned to his record-breaking speed on a particular leg of the old Carrera Panamericana. He stopped, unzipped a bag and pulled out the prize he’d been given for that: a  huge Bowie knife. Unsheathed, it glinted wickedly in the sunlight. Proudly, he showed us the engraved inscription.

I couldn’t help but imagine his trying to explain self-reliance and personal responsibility and treasured history to some airline baggage checker who happened to find such a weapon.

Later on that trip each of us got to ride along with Phil along sections of the old Carrera route. Honestly, it was hard to relate. The car he was driving was very modern, very high-tech, very smooth and quiet and its road manners were unflawed. Nor was he driving very hard, just a pleasant touring pace. I kept trying to strip away all the luxury and weight and safety measures from my mind, trying to imagine what it had been like to drive these relentlessly rugged roads at racing speed in the sketchy, brutal beasts of half a century before.

I couldn’t. The only point at which I caught glimpses was at corner entries. Phil would wait until the last meter before he nailed the brakes. That must have been ancient sense-memory I was witnessing. I hoped so.

Everyone who remembers Phil Hill mentions what a fine person he was. A time I saw that side of him was after I’d asked his help with a book on Chaparrals, and had thanked him in the forward. Fully a year after publication I was in Monaco for the GP, and came across Phil also watching the action. Over the screams of engines he made a particular point of expressing his appreciation for mentioning him.

I thought, it isn’t often in this business that you get sincere thanks from a racing driver. Mostly, their self-absorbed minds just don’t work that way.

And then there was the last time I saw him, at a gala awards function in Los Angeles earlier this year. Phil arrived in a wheelchair, his frailty a shock to anyone who remembered the vigorous athlete he’d been all his life.

He couldn’t speak loudly enough to be heard over the noise of the party, but his eyes were still sharp and alert. He was wholly aware of his situation. At one point, as his loyal friend John Lamm wheeled him by where I was, Phil’s glance met mine. He smiled, and his eyebrows went up and the look on his face was young and bright. What I believe his expression was saying is, “Isn’t this the darndest thing!”

It was work for him to be there, but he came. It was work to stand when acknowledged from the stage, but he stood. It was extremely hard, slow, labored work to sign autographs, but he did it, resolutely, painstakingly, completely. People wanted it, so he obliged.

A gentleman as well as a champion.

(From Pete’s regular monthly column, FAST LINES, in Vintage Racecar magazine, 2008)

Adventuring through time to witness the 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge

Now that history can be witnessed first-hand, I have ventured back to November 3, 2007. Yes, the date recognized by every schoolchild: the single day nearing the end of the Age of Risk when our Age of Automation truly began.

As everyone knows, the DARPA Urban Challenge was conducted at Victorville, California, north of what used to be Los Angeles. Now part of Greater Las Vegas, the site was then a desert (a place deficient in natural water) and ample room was found to hold the competition through the empty streets—imagine!—of a former military base.

Despite my special crash course in non-autonomous driving, I found getting to the venue absolutely terrifying. Though traffic was sparse by our standards, every one of the hurtling vehicles had a human hand on the controls! Let me tell you, risk is one thing when studied, quite another when experienced. I was enormously relieved to arrive alive and reenter the modern era.

Not that the Bots looked very modern to my eye. Robotics required much added equipment back then, so each of the 11 competitors (culled from 35 early hopefuls) in the final competition was a standard production vehicle festooned with primitive multi-emitter Lidar scanners operating in the infrared, plus old-fashioned optical cameras and GPS receivers. Inertial navigation contraptions and several of the astonishingly bulky computer units of the era occupied interiors. Most teams made use of control actuators already on the market for handicapped drivers.

The driver’s position remained open for a human to take over if necessary—as sometimes proved to be the case—but no one was aboard during the competition. My fellow spectators seemed to find that remarkable.

It was the simulated urban environment that distinguished this Challenge from its predecessors, the 2004 and 2005 tests across the open countryside which still existed in those days. Today’s task was to safely and accurately negotiate courses adding up to nearly 100 kilometers of streets and roads, complete with lane delineations, curbs and stop signs, plus merging, overtaking and self-parking exercises, all while observing California traffic rules. The trial was made enormously more complex by the simultaneous presence of rival Bots and also a fleet of human-driven automobiles, each following prescribed courses of their own. The time limit was six hours, although onlookers were cautioned that “we could run into dark.”

According to Dr. Tony Tether, legendary Director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), this was the first time multiple robotic vehicles had interacted in such a way, and before the event he frankly said he was “scared.” To forestall collisions, each competing Bot was trailed by a Control Vehicle fitted with a roll cage and driven by a helmeted human who could transmit a shut-off signal.

Funded by DARPA and numerous sponsors, the goal was to meet a U.S. Congressional mandate to have one-third of battlefield vehicles operating autonomously by 2015. The government’s stated motive was to save soldiers’ lives; many of the university students and industry personnel involved meant to extend the benefit to the public at large.

However, most with whom I spoke did not expect to see full automation of the world’s highways, “at least in our lifetimes.” They were merely looking to systems that would aid the human driver, extending the reach of Adaptive Cruise Control, Lane Departure Warning and similar functions that already existed. Of course we know what really happened, but we must not blame the good folk of the 21st for their short foresight, it’s a human characteristic. That’s why we have robots.

Although I wondered if we would, for a moment. The call to “Launch the Bots!” came at about 7:50 am, but it was 8:07 before one moved. And it wasn’t the designated first starter. That one, so honored because of its performance in qualifying rounds, was “Boss,” a modified Chevrolet Tahoe entered by Tartan Racing, aka General Motors in cooperation with Carnegie Mellon University. Why did it remain stationary?

Because its GPS navigation system had been scrambled by radio frequency emissions from a large television display nearby! The screen had to be switched off and the Bot rebooted while jokes went around that “Boss” had become fixated watching itself on TV. I rather doubt it; this was too early in robot evolution.

Meanwhile, others started at two-minute intervals, each following its assigned route, sounding various distinctive alarms and trailed by their Control Vehicles. Having studied my transportation history, I was put in mind of the famous “man with a red flag” that by law had to walk ahead of motor vehicles in Olde England. I must go back there some time.

When all was well the competitors moved along briskly, but very often one Bot or another found itself blocked or confused and abruptly stopped. Comedy would ensue, as the poor thing cast about with its whirling sensors and struggled to match what it “saw” with the Mission Definition File loaded into its little electronic mind. There would be much turning of front wheels this way and that, shifts into reverse, false starts and nose-diving halts until finally, to cheers from the crowd, progress would resume. Briefly.

One entry named “Knight Rider,” a Subaru from the University of Central Florida, spent a very long time utterly puzzled by a stop sign. It finally figured that out, only to veer off its route into a driveway, where it was terminated just short of the house. “Oshkosh,” a giant truck formerly known as “TerraMax,” took itself out by charging a storefront. Two other competitors had a face-off at an intersection, neither backing down until officials forced one to retire. Another clipped a curb.

“Talos,” a Ford from MIT, appeared to have the most trouble with a rugged dirt road segment of the route, although it haltingly soldiered through. But at one point it collided with “Skynet,” a Chevy from Cornell, which forced the whole event to pause for 20 minutes. Both Bots did continue to the finish.

Of the 11 starters, five were out by the end of the first of the day’s three “missions.” The remaining six went all the way to the end. As they began rolling under the checkered flag, event officials became more and more elated. This result exceeded their most optimistic expectations.

First across the finish line, some 5 1/2 hours after it started (including the race pause and pit stops between missions) was “Junior,” a diesel-powered VW Passat entered by Stanford, winning team of the 2005 Challenge. Averaging some 13 miles per hour, “Junior” was a standout for its smooth, confident-looking progress around the course.

But “Boss,” the Tahoe in trouble at the start, was going even better, averaging 14, steadily making up time, and when DARPA tallied up judging notes from more than 100 human observers this fastest of the robots had also made the cleanest run and Tartan Racing was declared the winner. The prize: two million dollars. That’s quite a lot of money back here and now.

Stanford’s “Junior” came second, earning $1 million. Third at $500,000 was “Victor Tango” from Virginia Tech. “Little Ben,” a first-year effort by a two-college team from Pennsylvania, was fourth. “Talos” and “Skynet” also finished the course, although outside the six-hour limit.

“A fantastic accomplishment,” declared Dr. Tether. For me, the fantasy was witnessing the very beginnings of the wonderfully safe and sane world we know today, when human driving is forbidden except in our few remaining Performance Preserves. I will return to my own time with new appreciation for our Brother Bots, and I must say I look with more favor on their desire to be Unionized.

As my Comm Implant is inoperable in this era, I must compose this report manually with something called a keyboard, an irksomely archaic method, and transmit it via the ancient Internet—which itself sprang from another DARPA initiative—for retrieval a century from today.

Of course the old Internet’s notorious insecurity means I am risking interception and premature publication, leading to incalculable Temporal Paradox.

I can only hope that doesn’t happen. But then, this is the Age of Risk.

(Prematurely published in November 2007 by autoweek.com)