Let’s face the cold facts: we as humans are hardly suitable to drive. I say this only because we are killing ourselves all the time but thankfully Google is inadvertently trying to put a stop to it. Even some car manufacturers such as Volvo and GM are investing and testing the idea of autonomous cars as well. Perhaps with this new technology over 2000 people won’t have to die in car accidents each year.
What we are doing now doesn’t work
I believe that one day in the future I will have to explain to my great grand-kids that we used to drive our own cars on public roads, and I will watch as their eyes grow wide with curiosity and disbelief. They will think it’s pretty cool until I tell them that we used to kill each other all the time, get road rage that would lead to fist fights and generally loathe any type of commute to work.
The force of resistance
There is a lot of resistance with autonomous vehicles, some people appear to be afraid of change, some people don’t trust computers, and some people actually enjoy driving. I myself have known to when the mood strikes put my foot down and exit a corner in a cloud of smoke. That’s fun and all but when I am bumper battling my way to work on a rainy cold Monday, I would much rather be sleeping or eating cheerios and checking twitter than focusing on the cars break lights in front of me.
It should also be said that when horses were replaced by the first car, you didn’t have people up in arms because they liked riding horses. They were instead reserved for spare time entertainment and hobby. That will be the same case with cars, as you will still be able to roar up and down a race track whenever you like. If you are concerned about computers not being reliable enough, you should take a better look at humans for we are the very definition of unreliability. We make mistakes all the time, we fall asleep behind the wheel, we intoxicate ourselves then drive, and we even run yellow lights to go a little bit faster.
The change is coming
Daimler CEO Dieter Zetsche summed autonomous cars up best:
“For us, autonomous vehicles are an important step on the way to accident-free driving; they will bring greater comfort and safety for all road users. That’s because autonomous vehicles also react when the driver is inattentive or fails to spot something. On top of that, they relieve the driver of tedious or difficult tasks while at the wheel.”
What we will also see is a large reduction in traffic, as computers are capable of understanding traffic far better than humans are, along with the fact that emotion will be left out of it, so no one will be cut off or have a hard time merging in. There will be nothing but benefits to a troubled personal transportation system.
