Driverless Cars: Is It Safe to Take the Human Out of the Loop?

Imagine a future with zero car accidents and taking a nap while going down the road. Imagine a future where there are no drivers, only passengers. And not just that, but imagine not worrying about having accidents or high insurance payments. With driverless vehicles, car accidents will drastically diminish and insurance rates will decrease, meaning they could have a better impact on the economy. Driverless vehicles will benefit society given that they will reduce accidents, can improve traffic flow by enhancing its efficiency, and protect the environment from harmful fuel emissions.

Self driving vehicles is a huge change in our society. We are taking the next step into the future and creating something bigger than ever. Driverless cars can be a good thing and a bad thing in todays society. We depend on so many things now, the older we get and the more time goes on, the lazier we get. Being Americans, we are putting our thoughts and ideas to the ultimate test to create something so dangerous but so efficient. We have thought of ideas that would make our lives "easier" and less stressful. In this paper I will describe how driverless cars work, the current problems and setbacks that we are having, and how this new technology is being put to use today.

Imagine being able to get into your car and simply typing in your desired destination, and then reclining your seat to watch a movie or text a friend. During this time, the car is basically driving itself. Well, soon this may be possible this invention is called an autonomous car. An autonomous car, or driverless/ robotic car, is a car that is designed to drive without human interference. Essentially, drivers can program their destination into the car’s GPS system and then sit back and relax. Some of the world’s largest car companies are currently creating autonomous vehicles, such as Audi, Toyota, Volvo, Mercedes, and countless others. The driverless vehicle is now becoming a clearer and more present reality, and has been discussed and planned for decades. The autonomous vehicle offers significant benefits, but raises many questions and difficulties.

According to an article by Investopedia called “How Google’s Self-Driving Car Will Change Everything,” Self-driving cars are expected to be safer because these cars won’t drive too fast, or take unnecessary risks-things people do all the time (Chase). Some other background information includes that over ninety percent of accidents are caused by driver error. There is every reason to believe that self-driving

Autonomous cars have the great potential to save millions of lives and stop millions of more crashes across the country. This could lower the amount that we spend on healthcare and cause the government to stop having to spend hundreds of billions on cleaning up after crashes, thus potentially lowering taxes. However, on the other hand, autonomous cars also have the potential to fail. If their systems were to fail we could see many fatal crashes. This is mainly due to manufacturers stating that you can relax behind the wheel and not pay full attention to the road, “a system called autopilot that implicitly encourages drivers to relax behind the wheel, yet relies on them to stay alert enough to intervene at a moment’s notice. The pitfalls of

Many people believe that self driving cars will be safer for distracted drivers, while others argue legal issues. “At the beginning of the 20th century, as the number of vehicles increased, the rate of deaths and injuries caused by vehicular accidents likewise jumped.” (Article 1) American have search for a new way to make driving safer and easier. We often come into questioning will self-driving prevent accidents or create more accidents?

Google has announced that their self-driving cars will be on the road in two to five years. The company hopes that they will in America by 2020 but even if they are not people wonder if they will be safe and if we are ready to share the road with these vehicles. I believe that we will be ready for self-driving cars on the roads because we already have vehicles with system to prevent collisions such as early warnings and automatic lane changing from tesla motors. John Villasenor is a professor of electrical engineering and public policy at the University of California, Los Angeles, he is also a member of the World Economic Forum's Global

People that are blind could then have the ability to drive wherever they so choose. In addition, people who use a wheelchair every day could simply roll up to the car and go. Driverless cars would drastically cut traffic tickets in half. You would also have more time for other things while your car is driving you such as working on homework, talking on the phone, drinking coffee, and the list goes on and on.

A self-driving car, also known as an autonomous vehicle, is a car capable of making decisions without human input. A successful self-driving car should be able to perform the tasks of a traditional passenger vehicle, but on its own. The major technologies that go into a self-driving car are LIDAR, radar, cameras, sonar, and GPS technology. The LIDAR allows for a mapping of the environment, the radar allows for the accurate determination of the speed of the cars surrounding it, the cameras capture images to determine things such as depth and dimensionality, the sonar provides cross reference data, and the GPS is used to plot routes for the car. These technologies work with each other so the car can safely perform tasks such as lane changing and parking. The major benefit to self-driving car is their ability to reduce the amounts of accidents that occur. A human can text and drive and also drive under the influence, while a computer cannot. Thus, removing the human from the vehicle can prevent many accidents, since most of them occur due to human error. This can also, in turn, lead to lives saved and money saved in medical costs. A second major benefit of self-driving cars is that they free up a lot of time that was previously used for driving, since the driver no longer has to focus on the road. This could lead to a more productive society, since the average American spends a lot of time driving. Autonomous vehicles are projected to reach the market around

A driverless car, also known as a self-driving car is an autonomous car which can perform the actions of the human being, as if a man were driving a traditional car. Some can say that the car is independent of the human as the car only needs to be programmed with the destination. The mechanical part of the vehicle is held by the car its own. Moreover, to function, the car has some specific technology, for example laser, radar, GPS and computer vision. Among the main obstacles to widespread adoption of self-driving vehicles, in addition to the technological challenges, are disputes concerning liability; the time period needed to turn an existing stock of vehicles from non-driverless to driverless; resistance by individuals to lose control of

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

One of the advantages is traffic safety improvements. Based on the study, 90 percent of accidents are caused by driving error, and 20 to 30 percent of those accidents are a result of distracted driving. The driverless cars will help to reduce the severity of 90 percent of all traffic accidents where they think that in 2020, it will drastically reduce traffic-related collisions and fatalities. But, things can get worse since it will occur the confusion about the capabilities of these vehicles along with the newness of the technology might cause some accidents as

As the technological revolution continues the line between possible and impossible blurs. 100 years ago, the tallest building in North America was 700 feet tall, but now we have buildings that tower close to 2,000 feet into the air (Swanson). With all these advancements in technology it was only nature for people to wonder about automating dangerous and hard jobs. With today’s current technology it would not be impossible to look out the window and see an autonomous car. Due to the average of 6 million car accidents worldwide, many people have inquired about the introduction of driverless cars (U.S. Department of Commerce). Many people would argue that it would benefit society but like anything there are always skeptics. Autonomous cars would benefit society because it would help the physically impaired, reduce automotive related deaths and reduce traffic. These causes will help to improve society.

Most of the automotive companies believe that the next generation of cars are going to be autonomous vehicles, but not all of them have the same opinion about it. Some companies want to bring a fully autonomous car to reality, which wouldn’t need any human interaction to drive the car, while other ones are interested in driverless cars, which need humans to drive them. Both “autonomous” and “driverless” concepts give cars more control over themselves, and both aim to give more comfort for mankind, thus providing an easier life for drivers and passengers, but the idea of an autonomous car on the roads raises some questions about the safety of it and the responsibility over a car like this. A driverless car can have most of the autonomous features, it just needs someone to drive it, and then the control would also be from a person that would be more watchful and take responsibilities over the car.

How will these driverless cars work exactly? according to the CQ researcher database paper Future of Cars, Developers are working on technology that will give car sensors and the ability to communicate with other cars so they will not get into accidents while they are moving. “They won't have a steering wheel, accelerator pedal, or brake pedal because they don't need them said a Google blog post, Our software and sensors do all the work” (par 4). It Still Remains unclear how safe super smart cars would be how they would affect traffic congestion how individuals and the nation would pay for them and whether Americans are ready to accept such a radical change in their century plus relationship with automobiles.