Driverless cars also called self-driving cars/autonomous cars are vehicles that can operate without human intervention. Driverless cars simply rely on sensors, connectivity and algorithms. There are no fewer than seven lasers; including a large spinning lidar unit on the roof; 20 cameras; a high-precision GPS; and a handful of ultrasound sensors (Knight, “Your driverless”). On the screen inside the car, the road looks aqua blue, buildings and other vehicles are red, yellow, and green, and nearby pedestrians are highlighted with what looks like little lassos (Knight, “Your driverless”). Although many people say that driverless cars pose many risk to our modern world, once they have analyzed the benefits they bring, people will decide whether benefits outweighs the risks.
‘I EXPECT HUMAN driving to become illegal in the next 25-35 years in developed countries,’ insisted Rice University’s Moshe Vardi in the course of plugging self-driving cars during a 2016 Reddit question-and-answer session (qtd. in Tuccille, “Self-driving car”). A survey finds more Americans think driverless cars will be common in 15 years, but 74 percent don’t expect to have or want one (ProQuest, “Driverless Vehicle Timeline”). Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla Motors, stated that “[s]elf-driving cars are the natural extension of active safety and obviously something we should do.” Moreover, Audi’s engineers and psychologists have spent years teaching the car to drive safely on the highway, but their real focus was on the human-machine interface that enables the tricky handoff (Davies, “Take the”).
A meta-analysis of 28 studies confirms that typing or reading on our phones while driving adversely affects stimulus detection, reaction time, lane positioning, vehicle control, and, yes, collision rate (Pelini, “Unsafe at”). Today around the world, the fatalities from car are on a rise due to human errors while driving. The fatalities from cars accidents caused by human error are around 35,000 people per year in the United States and some expert says that with the advent of self-driving cars that would change the whole scenario. In the United States, the fatalities from car accidents could fall as much as 90 percent (Biba, “What the”).
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In India, autonomous vehicles would also bring major benefits by reducing the high numbers of fatalities (Wadhwa, “Why India’s”). According to the nation’s Ministry of Road Transport and Highways, 146,133 people were killed in road accidents in 2015, and there were more than half a million reported accidents (Wadhwa, “Why India’s”). According to Beijing Review, from the perspective of accident rates, driverless cars are much safer than conventional ones (‘Can Driverless’). The Earth Institute at Columbia University estimates that autonomous vehicles would encourage more car-sharing, reducing the number of vehicles on city streets by one-third to one-half and enabling a 75 percent drop in car ownership (Wadhwa, “Why India’s”).
Driverless cars comes with many benefits such as a decrease in rate of accidents, more time and energy efficiency. Developing the AV (Audio Visual) technology with improved sensors and connectivity will help the passengers and pedestrians feel safe on the roads (BEC, “Driverless Cars”). Self-driving technology involves sensation, calculation, decision and execution, and in these aspects, computers will soon catch up with humans (‘Can Driverless Cars be Safe?’ Beijing Review). Today, big data and sensor technology, as well as autonomous vehicles’ systems of logic to identify obstacles and their communications channels, have developed to such a high level that they are more reliable and safer than human drivers, rather than the other way round (‘Can Driverless Cars be Safe?’ Beijing Review).
Driverless cars increases the mobility for current driver, disable and /or younger people. Also, it increases the productivity for many people. According to Greenhouse, Most of us in the United States commutes all alone in a single car. Also, the average American driver spends 51 minutes to and from work every day (Greenhouse, “Driverless Future”). Driverless cars would greatly help 1.5 million legally blind Americans and more than 5 million disabled people who can’t drive (Greenhouse, “Driverless Future”). Younger and older generation would also Thus, the autonomous cars would make it far more easier and cheaper for many disabled and young people.
With that, many risks includes cyberattacks, ethical decision, malfunction and loss of transportation jobs. Lawrence Katz, a labor economist said, “There could be a loss of about 5 million driver, which represent almost 3 percent of U.S. labor force” (qtd. in Greenhouse, “Driverless Future”). According to the American Trucking Associations, in 2010 about 3 million truck drivers were employed in the United States, and 6.8 million others held jobs related to trucking activity, including manufacturing trucks and servicing them (Wadhwa, “Why India’s”).
Truck and bus crashes kill about 4,000 people a year in the U.S. and injure another 100,000. Driver fatigue is a factor in roughly one of seven fatal truck accidents (Freedman, “Self Driving”). A huge economic crash would be seen due this self-driving cars.” People will suffer poverty due to loss of jobs and not being able to qualify for white collar jobs. Thus, when driverless cars will start running on streets there is going to a huge impact on lives of many and mainly government.
The Wall Street Journal story focuses exclusively on cybercrime – for example, locking a car remotely and refusing to open it until a ransom is paid. If millions of vehicles were shut down simultaneously, the ransom paid by car companies could be staggering (Samuelson, “Hackers Behind”). It’s cyberwarfare, attacks by terrorist groups or hostile nations intent on sowing panic and social disorder. Imagine the chaos if some adversary immobilized 10 percent of the light-vehicle fleet, leaving about 25 million cars and trucks sprawled randomly along roads from Maine to California (Samuelson, “Hackers Behind”). There are roughly 250 million cars and other light-duty vehicles (pickups, SUVs) on the road. In a good year, the industry sells 17 million vehicles. Even if, beginning in 2018, all these were driverless, it would be 15 years before today’s fleet was replaced (Samuelson, “Hackers Behind”).
After an Uber self-driving car crashed in Arizona in March, and a Tesla in autopilot mode crashed in Florida last year, killing its driver, people are asking that “[w]ho should be held responsible when a driverless vehicle crashes?” (David, “Who’ll be”). Scholars and experts in the field tend to have two, general assumptions: Widespread use of self-driving cars will mean fewer collisions, and there will be some shifting of liability from drivers to manufacturers (Gutman, “Who’ll be”).
Suppose it is 2025 and the driverless cars are in use. A family is traveling in a driverless car on a cliff highway and around the curve of it cars detects a crosswalk full of children. It brakes, but your lane is unexpectedly full of sand due to the recent landslide. It can’t get traction. Your car does some calculations: If it continues braking, there’s a 90% chance that it will kill at least three children. Should it save them by steering your family off the cliff? Due to this kind of moral decision that cars have to take, many people think that driverless cars should not be allowed on the roads. It is too complicated for them to make such ethical decision due to undeveloped technology. Some experts says that the technology for driverless cars is still like a newborn child who is developing, which doesn’t mean that they are not going to make some huge transformation.
Although there are many risks most of them could be potentially be solved. For example, cyberattacks could be prevented by creating a more powerful computer networks that the nutshell of connection cannot be hacked or manipulated. Iyad Rahwan, a computer scientist at MIT who oversaw the work, said that a public poll shouldn’t be the foundation of artificial-intelligence ethics. Technology is being developed to incorporate in the car to choose between the objects and make the best decision. Moreover, he added that regulating AI (Artificial Intelligence) will be different from traditional products, because the machines will have autonomy and the ability to adapt–which makes it more important to understand what people expect of technology (Johnson, “Study Offers”). With this, more technology is coming and people who are being convinced by new machineries will get acquainted with it.
Though, driverless cars has been a topic of debate for whether to allow it to run on roads. In 2017, with increased number of driverless cars, United States passed laws and adopted regulations to govern self-driving car. The Trump administration issues revised driverless-vehicles guidelines, which seek to encourage innovation by limiting government regulations. Thus, the technology developed was always beneficial and life changing in the past and so will the driverless cars be for the humans, smart and efficient in every way.
