It was an unfortunate and tragic turn of events indeed when Joshua Brown got killed in his Tesla Model S while it was in autopilot mode. The self driving mode was not able to differentiate the bright semitrailer truck against the sky and collided with it . It was the first fatal accident of Tesla in over 135 million miles of self drive . The accident was tragic like any other accident but posed an addition dilemma — Are self driving cars way to go ?
Lets take this issue on a general perspective . Almost all our technical innovations over the years have involved taking control from humans in one way or another . These were aimed to make our lives easy so that we could focus our minds on greater endeavors. With the development of computers we didn’t need to spend hours solving the long multiplications which seem so simple today . With the development of light bulbs we got the ability to work at nights . With the development of rail roads and air transport the impossible routes became a routine . But with each innovations we began to aspire for more. We never stopped . So do we need to stop now ? The logic given against auto pilot cars is that they take the complete control from you and might cause accidents for which you are not responsible . Well a valid point indeed . But think this way when a drunk driver collides with another , whose fault is that and how safe and successful human intervention has actually been ? An estimated 1.25 million people died in traffic related deaths in 2010 and number must have increased since then . So is this a successful total ? The condition of low income countries is much worse than the high income ones . The lack of adequate safety measures combined with greater disregard for traffic laws make them more vulnerable to this menace. And as the populations keeps on increasing the governments are finding it more difficult to manage the traffic . What options like Tesla offer is one of the measures that can go a long way in solving this problem provided we follow a rational approach.
The strange thing is that even with all these accident we have never demanded to ban cars . But with a single accident on auto pilot mode we are up in arms against the emerging technology . This behavior is not new for us humans . When Nicola Tesla began to suggest AC as the feasible medium of electrical transport , Edison was almost successful to dissuade people from using it by demonstrating how dangerous it . He burned cats on street and used it as an pretext for his logic that AC is fatal . The history of aviation is filled with similar allegations against it . As the famous saying went — “If man were meant to fly he would have been born with wings.”. Now where would we have landed had we followed such thought proces? Any innovation is bound to face challenges and all these need careful scrutiny but we , as humans , can’t simply block a process on the basis of a single incident . Moreover the allegation that self driving mode takes humans out of picture need some inspection . While it does exclude human control, all our present modes of transport do that in one way or another . Your cars have all sort of drive assisting mechanisms and you trust your lives with them , the airplanes that you so often fly in are driven by state of the art GPS technologies , the rail transports are increasingly becoming self driven or remotely controlled .Aren’t these too devoid of human intervention in one way or another ? So what makes the present case different from these and why this special outrage against it ?
My sympathies are with the deceased driver and his family but what we need here is caution and not an outright panic . Tesla needs to work on the faults , if any but it needs time and it needs support . If their innovation can help us to make our roads safe , it is certainly worth a try . Even Joshua believed that Tesla could go a long way in improving the plight of drivers today . May be he tested its limits too much or may be he was just an unfortunate victim of an untimely error . But I stand with his spirit. Science only takes you forward provided that you have in your heart to use it in the right way. Till then I would just hope than Elon Musk and his Tesla keep up the wonderful work they have been doing .
