Are Self-Driving Cars a Practical Future for Personal Transportation?
By Sam Duncan and Hunter Bentley
Introduction
We live in the pinnacle yet pivotal point for innovation within the technology world. It seems that as the years go by, we as a society push further and further towards bringing our imaginations of the future to fruition. Automated homes, virtual assistants, virtual reality, holograms, and robots are just a few of the technological advancements that deliver on futuristic visions that are illustrated in our favorite science fiction stories. One of the major advancements we have yet to implement in a practical way to our world are flying cars, but with the rapid growth and commonality of self-driving technology, we have achieved a closely related alternative to airborne personal transportation.
Companies like Tesla have made large strides towards making self-driving cars a more familiar and common technology in our everyday lives, but has it lived up to the hype? Are the self-driving cars of today delivering on the expectations we had years ago and can we truly see this form of transportation become our new normal? The following is an in depth analysis of the positive and negative implications that are associated with the fast growing popularity of self driving cars.
Pros
The introduction of self-driving cars will lead to a transportation revolution which will add a new ubiquitous system to the mix. Evaluating this new system at a pros and cons level is crucial to gauge the risk vs reward of new self-driving cars. The main reason to implement a self-driving system is to reduce the amount of accidents caused by human error. Specifically the misuse of drugs and alcohol while operating a vehicle. Self-driving will erase this issue, “Given some 40 percent of accidents can be traced to the abuse of drugs and or alcohol, self-driving cars would practically eliminate those accidents altogether.” This is a large percentage of crashes that can be eliminated by the successful use of self-driving cars.
If all normal cars are replaced with self-driving cars, this would lead to a reduction of traffic,”When you don’t allow cars to get in front of you traffic has to stop, your frustration level increases, and you become determined to let even fewer cars get in front of you — thus exacerbating the problem. Self-driving cars can be programmed to space out automatically, thereby eliminating the problem.” Removing human influence from driving decisions removes aggressive driving behavior, ultimately reducing the amount of traffic caused by human selfishness. Reducing traffic on the road; who wouldn’t want that?
Self-driving cars don’t need law enforcement to monitor the safety of roads anymore. Cars will be able to detect the speed-limit, reducing the amount of speeding, reckless driving, and driving under the influence. This allows for local law enforcement to focus on other areas, rather than policing the streets for vehicles.
Overall, taking the responsibility away from the driver is the main reason why we are seeing the development of a new system for cars. Reducing the amount of human error will lead to many benefits that will change transportation in the near future.
Cons
Safety is the main concern on the roads. Attempting to change such a large scale system such as transportation can have major drawbacks. The self-driving car model is not fully developed. This leaves a lot of questions to be answered. Specifically if safety will still be the main concern of roads and transportation. Will self-driving cars allow for people to have a safe experience or will this lead to technology endangering lives daily? These are all questions that still have yet to be answered and will need to be addressed. Without this information available yet, we are all left wondering if technology is capable of making choices made by people behind the wheel. Can computer’s make split second decisions that prioritize the safety of all humans involved? In the near future, we must focus on these outstanding concerns.
If we are to move to a model where all cars are self-driving in the future, we need to consider what we will do with all human operated cars. Waste management is already an issue that is being generated faster than humans can match. Will we see all manual cars junked? This leads to many environmental issues that can not be imagined yet. Before we move towards a self-driving model, we need to discuss the environmental concerns.
Tesla is a lead innovator of the self-driving car model, making great strides to accomplish this goal. Tesla is a company notorious for making cars with modern technology integrated into the car, but this also comes with a very large price tag. The question is now raised, are these cars going to be affordable for all? The simple answer is no. Tesla currently makes cars with an approximate six figure average per vehicle. This is not affordable for the average person, so how will this new system of transportation be implemented if the majority of people can’t afford to buy a car. Technology is expensive, but we need to find ways to reduce capital greed, and increase affordability for all.
Considerations for the Future
With all this in mind, there are multiple important factors to consider before we fully buy into the vision of self-driving cars as something that we as a society can accept as normal. For example, how would other types of vehicles on the road be affected by this drastic adaptation to personal transportation? How would commercial vehicles like eighteen wheelers, delivery trucks, school and city buses adapt if self driving technology becomes more and more common? Would self driving school buses, public buses, and eighteen wheelers be something we as a society can really trust? Would the dangerous outcome of a potential technological error of a self driven 30–40 ton vehicle be a risk we are willing to take just to deliver on our futuristic ambitions.
How adaptive can these cars be to ongoing changes of road conditions, rules, and regulation? Can human reaction to construction zones, road hazards like potholes, and the continuously changing speed limits for highways during various times of the day be replicated through artificial intelligence alone? As smart as these cars are advertised to be, the road is one of the most unpredictable places, and it is hard to imagine that changing anytime soon.
The unpredictable nature of the road comes with the territory of personal transportation. Although self-driving technology is striving to mitigate this, it doesn’t mean that the adoption of self-driving cars by the majority of society will come easily. In addition to these cars being unaffordable, the inability for people to trust these cars as long as there are other human operated vehicles on the road will make it difficult for these cars to become normalized. The ability to be more productive and relaxed during your daily commute is a major selling point for these vehicles. But as long as the road is filled with incapable and inconsiderate drivers, how likely will the owners of these cars truly reap the benefits of what these self-driving cars are supposed to provide? Would you be comfortable answering emails or watching the news on your morning commute knowing that there may be a reckless driver on the road that could t-bone your car without you being aware enough to react? It almost seems that the fascinating concept of self driving cars is just that, a fascinating concept. The idea of taking your eyes off the road even though your car is driving itself is still hard to be comfortable with, so what freedoms and luxuries are we actually gaining?
One final consideration goes beyond the scope of technology alone and dives more into a conversation surrounding ethics. As much as research may suggest that self-driving cars are safer and more reliable than human operated vehicles, it is undeniable that mistakes and unfortunate events are bound to occur. In the case of malfunction, who takes liability when an accident happens? Accidents involving self-driving cars mean that more parties are involved other than just the drivers/occupants. Manufacturers, software developers, and larger companies now enter the conversation when we talk about responsibility for road mishaps. It becomes an even more complex conversation when considering the role that insurance companies play in all of this. For these reasons, legal adaptation and legislation that address these gray areas are crucial for any degree of normalization of self-driving cars to occur.
Overall, it is hard to ignore the remarkable strides we as a society have made towards creating a future that is beyond our wildest dreams. A lot of the innovations we see today are welcomed with open arms and optimism, but when it comes to self-driving cars, it is clear that this may not be the case. That isn’t to say that we won’t get to this point down the road, but there are still lots to consider and address before we can see self-driving technology be something that becomes commonplace within the world of transportation.
