I am someone who likes a late night drive with the windows down blasting music. I am also someone who gets frustrated in traffic and annoyed by other drivers’ mistakes. When I first heard about the driver-less car, I was somewhat surprised to hear how advanced they really are. It’s also surprises me that so many people are backing this idea. I know a lot of people out there who love driving their cars. Its entertainment for many people so when I heard about cars that drive themselves, it was interesting to me that so many people supported them.
The idea of the driver-less car sounds superb to me. The potential benefits to society that an innovation like that could bring are incredible. If perfected, driver-less cars could be astronomically safer than human drivers. They could make people more efficient by using the time that they would be driving on something productive.They could also heavily cut down traffic violations.
Google is a major player in the driver-less car market. They have the most advanced car yet. Their car is current;y out on the roads driving itself and its passengers wherever they need to go. This car has proven to be extremely safe compared to human drivers. It has been in a few accidents since beginning its testing, but all the accidents have been caused by other human drivers. The accidents were from other drivers not paying attention and hitting the driver-less car while it was stopped. Of course, the car still has some bugs and is years away from being the mainstream car, but the technology is extremely advanced and only getting better. This paper explains more about Google’s car.
There are people who still have doubts about the safety and reliability of the car. In order to persuade doubters, more studies must be done. I believe to test the safety of the car, you must compare it to the safety of a human driver. To do this, I think that they should have a human driver drive the same route every day for a year and record how many accidents/close calls the human driver encounters. Then you have the driver-less car drive the same route at the same times as the human driver did and record the accidents/close calls. By doing this, you’re holding all variables constant and only testing the driving ability of the car compared to the human.
The results of the hypothetical experiment could vary. The driver-less car could actually be safer, but the results could be a false positive. The human driver could be safer, but the results could be a false negative. The results could be due to third variables like other drivers, weather conditions, traffic, etc. or, as always, the results could be due to chance
I am a big believer in the driver-less car technology. I believe it will only get better as the years go on, and I think if the whole country goes driver-less, we could see amazing benefits in society. I am interested to see what ideas other people have for a good experiment to test the safety of driver-less cars.
Sources: http://www.eila.univ-paris-diderot.fr/_media/user/claire_dupuy/google_cars_text.pdf
http://www.umc.edu.dz/images/518020a.pdf
Picture: https://www.google.com/search?q=driverless+cars&espv=2&biw=1366&bih=613&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiqjYPy3NTQAhXFPCYKHZpBDE4Q_AUICCgD#imgrc=rMTRGrMREXHevM%3A
I really like this topic because there is a huge debate to this. I agree with you, I hope in the future there will be cars like this with full safety. I know a huge debate is wheather or not the car is bewteen saving your life behind the wheel or protect you and risk the danger of hitting someone else. Here is an article from NY Times on that debate…http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/24/technology/should-your-driverless-car-hit-a-pedestrian-to-save-your-life.html?_r=0
i think this new technology sounds really interesting and I think it would be great if everyone became on board with it in the future. I think the problem with it though is that people like to drive their own cars. People who have been driving for years and are used to that may not want to give that up. Since the driver less cars are so much safer than just normal driving I think that that is a point that needs to be made to people. I agree with what you said at the end of your post, if the whole country was able to turn to driver less cars I think the benefits to society would be amazing. I hope one day that does happen. Interesting post!