Signal 4: Will autonomous vehicles save us from ourselves?
In my previous signal, I touched upon some potential results of the fast-approaching autonomous technology in near future. My approach was mainly pessimistic and based on how semi-autonomous vehicles could bring more harm than good.
However, I realized that the dystopian idea about autonomous devices (i.e. robots) comes to mind autonomically! not because of very rational thinking but popular conspiracy theories that have been featured in many sci-fi books and movies for a very long time. (Terminator, Matrix etc.)
So, I delved further into the autonomous vehicle technology, specifically into the details of driverless car accidents to understand their underlying reasons better. Let’s take two very recent fatal autonomous vehicle crashes recently happened in Arizona and California, respectively. According to detailed government investigations, in both of them, drivers rather than the autonomous technology embedded to vehicles turned out to be the main reasons that caused those accidents[1]. The below statistics is a good indicator to see the percentage of traffic accidents caused by AV’s[2]. It’s obvious that AV’s faults are much fewer than human’s faults.
Moreover, based on the Federal Automated Vehicles Policy published by U.S Department of Transportation[3], the governmental agencies are ready to embrace AV’s technology and working hard on regulations.
I have still mixed opinions on the subject, although studies and investigations depict an optimistic future. I keep the idea of that AV’s are not only a subject of pure science but rather a public issue that requires to be explained especially to people who are not exposed to the technology directly. Andrew Ng could be right by saying that “it’s pedestrians who need to improve their behavior and train to maneuver safely around self-driving cars.”[2]
[1]http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/automated-car-accidents/
[3]https://www.transportation.gov/AV/federal-automated-vehicles-policy-september-2016
