I will tell you, but first, a story:
For those that may not know me very well, I’m a pretty avid cyclist and general two-wheeled user of things. My interest mainly lies in mountain bikes and most things involved with dirt, but occasionally I’ve been known to do the group road ride or two. A few years ago I was sweeping (at the back) a group ride of about 8-9 people near my house and toward the end of the ride, I was plowed in to (rear ended at around 35-40 mph) by a young driver. I was knocked out, and was banged up pretty bad. Split my helmet, too. Had I not been wearing it that night, I would almost surely be in a different position / state of life at this moment.
Sidenote: bike frame was good, though (for those wondering). Steel is real, man!
Since then, I’ve been admittedly timid about getting back out on the road, but I’m slowly getting my head around being back out and have done a number of really stellar road rides since then. One of the things I’ve noticed as I’ve ridden / driven around in the years since then is that people are paying less and less attention to the act of driving. Cell phones, our ever increasing need to be busy and productive during every second of our lives, and the arguably increasing number of gadgets in cars today are preventing a genuine focus of driving.
Now, if you’re thinking, Sander, WTF are you getting at here? I’ll wrap it up.
An opportunity appeared a few months ago to start doing some research work on the vehicle integration / control side of an autonomous vehicle. Honestly, I didn’t think about that whole bike thing when I initially agreed to the research work (I mainly just thought the mental food / challenge was completely awesome), but as I’ve come to understand the challenges (chewy, incredibly interesting challenges) and numerous potential advantages to autonomy it’s made me revisit that whole scenario. I am 100% confident that that incident could have been prevented with technology that’s currently in rapid development or even already available.
The point of this is that I’ve agreed to take a full time position at the company who hired me to do the research work a few months back (I’m intentionally holding the name of the company back until a later date).
Internal combustion control will always be my first professional love, but it feels pretty stellar to work on something that could actually aid in saving someone’s life.
Obsidian Motorsport Group will still be “open” but just in a very limited capacity.
If there are any questions, please email me directly from the contact page.
Thank you to all of my customers and friends who have helped me to get to this point. Truly.
