Computers in Transportation – Autonomous Cars
An autonomous car is a vehicle that does not need a human driver in order to work. These types of vehicles have an autopilot technology which allows It to get from one point to another point without the need for human interference. The technology seems far away but it’s already here and there are many pros and cons to autonomous cars that need to be looked at.
A large percentage of our lives is eaten away from our commutes to work, school, or elsewhere. Life would be dramatically changed if we could use that time wisely while our cars did all the work. As well as being time efficient, autonomous cars and other vehicles do not allow have human error that normal human run cars and vehicles
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A very important downside that people often bring up is based on ethical judgments that the cars computer may need to make. If an autonomous vehicle can not slow down in time and has to choose between hitting a car in front of it or a child beside it or vise versa. How can we be sure that a car would make the best ethical decision in a time like that? Unfortunately, that isn’t a question we can easily answer because of a few different reasons. For example, in a situation where a human is driving, the human will not ponder on which decision is more ethical. Also these situations have no good or correct solution because any outcome is poor and sad. Another important factor to think on this is that the odds of these unfortunate situations are extremely small and very unlikely. Another negative reason autonomous cars aren’t readily available to the consumer is because they haven’t been intensely studied and tested like human driven cars have. This creates a very difficult scenario where the developers have to persuade consumers and everyday citizens that these machines are safe even if they haven’t been driven thousands of millions of miles. Before most consumers feel safe there will need failure estimations and percentages of collisions and the odds of anything going
Another advantage to autonomous vehicles is reduced traffic congestion. If all traffic is controlled by computers and GPS it would mean all cars will be able to drive at the same speed which means there will be less breaking which will lead to less traffic jams. Braking distances will be decreased because the cars computer will have a faster reaction time than a human, which means cars can travel closer together. This means more cars can fit on the road at any one time. Another way it reduces congestion is at traffic lights. Autonomous cars will be able to move off instantly as soon as the light changes to green which will mean the cars behind will not have to wait as long to move off [6]. This also means more cars will be able to travel one green light compared to when humans have control of the car.
Most people believe that these self-driving cars are going to make our roads much safer than they are with human drivers. According to an article titled “Road Crash Statistics” by the Association for Safe International Road Travel, “nearly 1.3 million people die in road crashes each year, on average 3,287 a day.” They also claim that road crashes is the ninth leading cause of death. Obviously automobiles are dangerous, but they are also very effective for transportation. According to Statista there were over 7 million cars sold to U.S. customers in 2014. Even though automobiles have caused so many deaths, most people really need them.
Self driving cars are a great idea because they can decrease the amount of accidents on the road. The biggest percentage of car crashes are caused by human error and having a computer driving the car would take away the aspect of human error. For example if a person was driving and the car in front of them hit their brakes really fast, and the person driving was distracted by something then they would not notice this as fast as the computer because the computer would constantly be watching the road and will not get distracted meaning that the person may crash and the computer would not. Having teens use a self driving car instead of driving themselves would cause less accidents and would save lives. “If all U.S. teen drivers traded car keys for the Waymo service, we could eliminate one million accidents and countless teen fatalities.” This shows that self driving cars are much safer than people driving on their own. Some people that oppose the idea of self-driving cars may look at the ethical side of this and think of how a self driving car would swerve off a road for a deer but then possibly killing the
Are Americans ready for cars that can drive themselves?, will it be safe for “ai’s” on the road instead of normal human drivers?, and how will this be beneficial to traffic, crashes, and time? In the Newsela article, “pro/con: self-driving cars are just around the corner. Is it a good thing?”, By Tribune News Service, Self-driving cars remove many of the human mistakes that cause injuries and deaths. Self-driving cars can also help disabled and elderly people get from place to place on their own. The self-driving cars that are now being developed use many forms of technology to drive themselves. Radar, cameras and other devices are used to "see" the world around the car. Advanced computer systems drive the car from one destination to another without any help from humans. Self-driving cars offer such a wealth of advantages that it makes little difference whether Americans are ready. Americans need to get ready. Self-driving cars will soon be in their rearview mirrors.
Cars are now becoming much more aware and these cars are available to the general public. In 2005 there was a course for autonomous vehicles and no car completed a tenth of the course(Guerra). These cars can now park themselves, raise their wheels to avoid potholes, check if you are drifting out of your lane, check out your blind spots, they know if any object is behind you when you are backing up and most important Tesla released a car that could drive itself on highways. Eleven years ago cars like this were science fiction and in 20 years they might become commercially available (Guerra). This is the start of self-driving cars being in the hands of ordinary people and not a test group. Some people my opt out of owning a self-driving car, however they will still need to
Since the beginning of self-driving cars which first began in 1925 with the creation of the Houdina Radio Control; a car operated by two cars, a transmitter, and an antenna, to now - the futuristic dream of these autonomous cars have transformed into the reality of cars we see now. These cars are nothing short of the new technology advances that have occurred over the past decade. However, with these advances many question whether or not these cars are ready to be sold, due to the fatal accident that occurred May 2016 involving the autonomous Tesla and a white truck. Due to the Tesla not being able to detect the white tractor because of technological issues, the tesla failed to stop, and since the driver was not prepared to steer, it lead to the fatal collision eventually leading to the death of the tesla owner. With the increase of these cars on the road, from companies like BMW, Daimler, Ford, Apple, Uber, and Google, this poses a serious threat to not only the people operating this autonomous vehicle but also to the surrounding drivers. I believe that autonomous cars should not be put on the road, and that these cars are not beneficial to the population.
Currently one of the main topics of discussion in the AI community is self driving cars. Self driving cars would be much safer than manually operated cars and with a lot of work they could even be developed to form a network across the country they are in so that they can “talk” to each other. This would greatly reduce the amount of deaths resulting from cars. However self driving cars have also raised plenty of issues such as the fact they could put many professional drivers out of work. Furthermore there are many moral issues raised by automated cars, the trolley problem, a problem involving choosing between killing one or more persons as opposed to another group/person, is a very popular theory right now as self driving cars would have to
Many great technological feats have been accomplished in the past few years, one of the most notable would be the creation of self-driving cars. Along with the topic of what can be done with this technology, there is also the topic of what should be done with the technology from an ethical standpoint. Self-driving cars while not perfected are worth their innumerous benefits, despite the current limitations and drawbacks. Every year there are numerous incidents where the driver is responsible for a crash or even death. A self-driving car could be the very solution necessary to solving the abundance of accidents that occur daily across the nation. There are different levels of automation ranging on the amount of the drivers control of the vehicles. This technology is already being implemented in creative and helpful ways, and has been successfully tested.
So it could take its passengers where they want to travel with safely and comfortably with having any trouble. But, the fact is that machines don’t have brains! They can’t think, feel, and that’s the major detriment of such cars. According to me, due to this fact, a self-driving car could create an increase in car accidents. Because computer systems do make silly mistakes and unfortunate errors. For example, weather can also affect technology like rain, hurricane, tornado, and earthquake. This car can also make things worst, for example, imagine you are driving on a road with your family and your kids are sitting in the back seat. Suddenly, a truck carrying fuel ignites in front of you. Now you need to act fast, as it could explode anytime. You cannot reverse because there is a long line of traffic behind you , but there is an open field at the side of the road. In the blink of an eye, you will turn your car into the field and floor the accelerator hoping to get as far away from the burning truck as possible. Now, imagine the same situation, but this time you and your family are sitting in a driverless car. The car is setup to obey the road rules and it is only programmed to drive on the road. It cannot go into the field and it cannot go backward. What will the car do? You might have to switch from automatic
Self-driving cars are a rapidly evolving technology which only a few years ago was still considered science fiction. The causes of the success of this innovation is related to the fact that it won’t be a human intervention while driving, so the lack of human error. In addition disabilities would no longer limit people to drive. Furthermore, the car would be able to drop the person off and then find a parking space further away so it would need less space for parking as well as. Self-driving cars will eliminate the need for a driver’s license. So anyone can move from a place to another when he wants. The car was even designed to understand the different movement patterns it perceives around so it can adapt its reactions in real time. Then, several times per second, the car evaluates hundreds of different driving maneuvers and chooses the best among these maneuvers. The environmental impact of driverless cars
Self driving cars should not be allowed because it required to many safety concerns that be are not prepare for, the weather is one of the main problems, a robot should be trusted? The magazine "Scientific American" show proves of the "Software Nightmare" the author reveal a percentage that shows that in the year 2011 terminal crashes appear about once for every 3.3 million hours of driving and crashes that resulted in injury happened nearly once for every 64,000 hours of driving. Humans are the most reliable sources in the world to drive vehicles. It will be way too difficult to achieve progress for software engineering and signal processing to develop safely self driving
Autonomous vehicles I s one way. Autonomous vehicles, which are cars that can drive themselves were found to be much safer than an automobile driven by a human, at least in early tests. These vehicles are capable of keeping traffic flowing which would reduce traffic jams and accidents caused my impatient drivers. Autonomous vehicles use a barrage of sensors mounted all around the vehicle to measure the distance from obstacles or other vehicles. They can also plan and follow routes and calculate speed. Speeding, which is a major cause of accidents would be eliminated, however because of the accuracy of the sensors and sophisticated technology in these cars, it could be possible to have cars driving safely at speeds of one hundred miles per hour.
Extensive automation for cars focuses on either introducing robotic cars or modifying modern car design to be semi-autonomous. These could be implemented sooner as they rely less on technology that is still at the forefront of research.
Have you ever asked yourself, “Are self driving vehicles even possible?” Well, the simple answer is yes. In fact, the self driving car and other self driven forms of transportation, like autopilot, have already been invented. The exception being that the self driving car is still being tested before becoming commercially available. It truly is amazing how much has been done in such a short period of time. Go back 20 years and some of these ideas seemed completely impossible. Autopilot and the self driving car are significant inventions to our world because they make transportation safer, they make it easier to get around, and provide a newer, simpler solution.
One of the major incentives for developing autonomous vehicles is the potential impact on vehicle safety. In 2009, there were 10.8 million motor vehicle accidents in the US, resulting in 35,900 deaths (Census 2012). It’s estimated that over 90% of all accidents are due to