Image Credit: Wikimedia
From the time the first model T from Ford’s assembly line rolled off on to the roads, cars have required a human driver to helm the steering. No one could imagine a car driving all by itself, even a decade ago, but this amazingly intriguing notion of driverless cars is moving fast towards becoming not just a plausible reality, but also a commercially viable product.
Major automobile firms like Tesla, Audi and Nissan have been investing heavily in this concept for the past few years and now many of these companies offer partially autonomous cars in the market.
With a whopping amount of $5.6 trillion in global savings, that could be realized if driverless cars are adopted globally, not only the traditional car manufacturers, but tech firms such as Google and Uber are also investing equally heavily in powering this concept forward. And mainly due to the efforts of tech giants such as these, the technology behind driverless cars i.e. powerful and highly integrated Artificially Intelligent systems, have made a high amount of breathtaking progress.
These driverless cars, which are being tested widely, have proven to have faster reaction times when it comes to accident avoidance and now, they are even learning to listen and react to sounds from oncoming vehicles like police and ambulance cars.
A fully autonomous car that doesn’t need a human driver at all might still be some time away, but the currently available technology is expected to make vehicular travel safer, less costly and highly entertainment and connectivity oriented.
While some related fields like insurance would certainly take a hit through the introduction of driverless cars, the infotainment gadget and accessory industry could see a whole lot of business opportunities in a car where a human might be free to do anything he wants.
Driverless cars will not just be like any other product, it’s a major disruption whose effects will ripple across various industries, creating new ones and obliterating the old ones.
But the biggest issue with automation has always been the concern towards loss of jobs. For e.g. a driverless car would not need a “Driver” and a driverless truck could haul any type of goods across any type of length, without even stopping until there is mechanical failure.
They can increase efficiency and effectiveness but create millions of displacements due to the elimination of jobs. The opinion towards driverless cars and trucks has been highly polarized up till now, due to exactly their audacious nature to solve a long standing problem while also create another one in its aftermath.
But job loss is not the only obstacle that driverless cars are facing in their journey towards higher degrees of acceptance. Due to the vehicles working completely without the help of a driver, one of the biggest concerns, naturally, for many future consumers is the possibility of an accident.
No one at the steering wheel and the car moving forward as normal is a nightmarish scenario for many because the very sight is frightening. We have grown so accustomed towards seeing people drive cars, that now, the concept of driverless cars, will look anything but normal. This issue of a trust deficit needs to be tackled in a proper way to clear the path for more people to come, understand and adopt this marvelous human technological feat.
As of now, over 93% of the accidents occur due to human error. Driverless vehicles have an excellent safety record and even with some minor hiccups along the way, they could drastically reduce the number of daily accidents that could take place. That’s because these cars are well guided through highly complex algorithms powering the onboard AI system and can even go on to discern a dog from a human.
One great example of this exemplary safety record can be seen from Waymo, Google’s self- driving arm, which has clocked nearly 1.7 million miles of testing and has so far been only involved in just 24 accidents, out of which just one was the result of miscalculation on onboard guidance systems.
The first real update in the automatic cars will be available to the public by 2018, which will enable users to choose the option of “hands-off-driving”. This means that drivers will be allowed to let the car be driven automatically while having the option to wrest back control if the situation demands it. Due to this option, drivers will be held responsible for any accident or if the technology fails.
However, these cars will only be able to give you an automatic driving time for 3 minutes maximum after which it will require you to take manual control. If you fail to do so, the car will halt after driving to a safe spot.
Although the automatic driving cars have yet to make their commercial appearance, they have already acquired a large base of fans and firms, who wait anxiously to see this breathtaking technology in definite action and the tomorrow to finally arrive today.
Judy Robinson
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Autonomous cars and artificial intelligence are definitely the future!