Why Drive When A Robot Could Do It

Driverless cars are gaining more attention as they become more of a reality in recent years, every car company is working on getting a working self-driving car on the road, to reduce the number of accidents and increase safety on the roads also a self-driving car is just kind of cool. These cars will use lasers to bounce non-visible light off of objects on the road and time how long it will take for the light to get back to see the road around them. “Google employs Velodyne’s rooftop Light Detection and Ranging system, which uses 64 lasers, spinning at upwards of 900 rpm, to generate a point cloud that gives the car a 360-degree view.” (Vanderbilt) This technology makes it possible for the car to see the road and drive itself this also allows the car to track other cars and pedestrians making the car safer and faster. With the car having such a fast response time the company could even increase the speed that the car will drive reducing the commute time of those in the car and reducing traffic.” looking at creating cars that are either smaller and more compact, or larger and laid out without a traditional driver’s seat, turning the car’s cabin into a mobile lounge area.”(Gibbs) with people able to fit more people into a smaller area its possible to make taxis better and increasing how many people you can move for the same amount of gas.

To make self-driving cars as effective as they can be you would need to prevent people from driving. “humans are at fault in more than 90% of car accidents” (Solon) removing the human factor could very much reduce fatalities in car accidents saving lives when at the same time letting people use their time better instead of waiting in traffic they could do work or relax before getting to work. Self-driving cars could save lots of lives but not everyone is convinced that self-driving cars are as good as their manufacturer’s claims about the safety of their driverless cars with an accident being twice as likely to happen in a driverless car as well as the machine having a less flexible way of driving it could cause an accident. “In attempting to move around the sandbags, the car’s left front struck the side of the bus that was trying to overtake. The car had detected the bus but predicted it would yield, and the test driver behind the wheel also made that assumption.” (Solon line) These accidents make people skeptical of how well self-driving cars might be able to drive what people don’t realize is that the car makes a prediction about what is going to happen and then drives according to that prediction it is not as smart as a person and can only guess about those around it might drive and is not familiar with how everyone on the road might drive. Some people are skeptical of self-driving cars making incorrect predictions about what might happen on the road and they claim that these accidents are reason enough to try and prevent self-driving cars from being on the road, These people are forgetting one important piece of information however every incident involving a self-driving car changes will make to make all driverless cars better and they all get better at driving together instead of one at a time like people would this fact mixed with the companies improving designs and as more self-driving cars are on the road the better their predictions will get because all the driverless cars will drive the same. Many people are using the cars that they have now as self-driving cars but the technology isn’t that developed yet, and it could cause some deadly accidents “No purely autonomous vehicles are available at present, but several with self-driving features are currently on our roads.”(Gibbs) With little information about how well purely self-driving cars will be able to handle driving with humans it’s a safe bet that they will get better over time. Many people are wary of self-driving cars and for good reason but as time goes by and problems are fixed and fewer mistakes are made self-driving cars will be more popular and with more self-driving cars the better they will be.

“File:Google driverless car at intersection.gk.jpg” by Grendelkhan is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.