The Cart Before The Bus

Apparently the news in my home country, in respect to public transport, is that the government and some companies, is planning to introduce an autonomous self-driving bus. Needless to say, this caught people’s attention. But it is still in trial, and it is not clear when the technology will be mature enough to be in use. And how would the safety aspect be implemented; if there is an accident, will the human stand-in driver be at fault, or the operator, or even the supplier of the system? There are more questions to add, but my main question is why would you want an autonomous driver? Malaysia has a very big problem with public transportation, both due to bad planning and not so good operation, and buses are also part of the problem. Making them autonomous doesn’t solve any of the problem, and it would cost huge amount of money too.

This is similar to when people trying to submit their thesis in the last week of a long semester class. Their laptop will inevitably feel slow and they would say, “I need a new laptop”, or a better software, or use the newest AI, when in fact, they didn’t do their job in the first place. Similarly when people wants to finish their work and so called be productive, they’ll go on a search on the best way to create their work setup… that they’ll procrastinate from doing their real work. Yours truly suffer from the same problem.

So when I read the news above, I feel frustrated not only because the amount of money that will be misspent, but also because how similar bad plannings in a person, can still be prevalent in a community when there is no real understanding of what is importatnt. I hope that I will continue to realise this and be consistent on doing the ‘real’ important thing, and not be distracted. Let’s not put the cart before the horse. Or in this case, the autonomous before the bus.

Thank you for reading.