Ghost Driver

A new innovation that has started to come out in the last couple of years is automatic driving cars. These have been made using the rapid progression in science and computers and other technology becoming more advance and more powerful. The cars are able to do this because of the car’s use of GPS systems to do routing and to be able to navigate around and get to your destination. They also use a combination of lasers and lights to scan and analyze the environment and create a 3d model using the computer in the car, “Traditional radar is also used for detecting distances to objects and cars, as are various cameras, accelerometers, gyroscopes, and GPS, which are all used in conjunction to build a 3D picture of the environment around the vehicle.”(Gibbs). Using this the car can avoid hazards that might come out from behind something or from the side of the car it can also use this to make turns. The last major thing the car uses is cameras in the front and in the back of the vehicle, the car uses these to brake when a car is backing out or just while driving on the road.

The technology that the cars are using at this time isn’t perfect. Like all machines, they are prone to errors and need repairs to stay in good shape because of this a good amount of downsides to self-driving cars. One major downside to a self-driving car is that it takes time to compute the information and build things like the 3d model of the environment. Normally the car would be able to do this perfectly fine but say if the car has been sitting outside in the heat, the computer could be overheated which could cause crashing or slowdowns which would cause the self-driving to fail and could cause an accident. Another problem with the cars is if any of the parts that are used to drive get damaged then the car won’t be able to accurately drive and you could get into an accident. Another issue is if it rains while you’re using self-driving because the rain can and will make the range on the lasers used in the system lower, “This seemed to be an issue at play in the fatal Tesla crash, where the one sensor that did spot the truck misinterpreted it as a road sign overhead.” (Solon). This is one of the major issues with the self-driving system but with enough testing, a fix could be found.

The self-driving car systems are starting to be used by the general public. The primary usage of self-driving is just in normal cars especially cars like a Tesla which anyone who owns one can use freely. Another way that it’s being used is to deliver products to people this is good for companies because it’s less expensive for them to use but it does start taking jobs away from the public.

“Tesla Model X rear view” by Don McCullough is marked with CC BY 2.0.