Introduction

Self-Driven cars also known as driverless cars are a relatively new and exciting technology. They are unmanned vehicles capable of sensing its environment using a variety of technology such as radar, computer vision and GPS.

Driver error is the most common cause for the fatal accidents. Using mobile phones, gadgets, music system are grabbing the drivers’ attention. So, if the drivers aren’t concentrating, self-driving cars can do it for you, which have self-parking and pre-safe systems.

Though many argue that self-driving cars are not as safe as human driven cars, they are safer with fewer errors and faster reactions as there is no human intervention, only the cars software, reducing the congestion, road rage and increasing the safety. They also have many potential economic benefits.

The initial efforts in 90s to create self-driving cars focused on developing radio-equipped roads could communicate with the cars driving on them. The 400- feet road was embedded with these circuits to create an opportunity for driverless cars manufacturers. Although, these test drives yielded positive results, and could navigate on special roads, the cars developed to move via radio signals were not truly autonomous. They could not react to the environment independently, instead were following instructions and signals.

In 1987, VaMoRs, an unmanned vehicle with two cameras, sensors, and an onboard computer is made. This car could recognize and react to other vehicles, road signs and conditions of the road independently (Self-Driving Cars par.3).

In 1988 a team of engineers, led by Ernst Dickmanns, debuted an autonomous Mercedes. This car drove over 994 miles and reached top speed of 112mph. Five percent of the trip was completed without any human intervention. Today, Google and Tesla motors are the most famous developers of autonomous cars. Google’s self-driving cars use a combination of Googles street view maps, sensors, cameras mounted all around the cars specially designed for them (“Self-Driving Coalition for Safer Streets” par.2).

All these features make driverless cars safer than a manned vehicle.

Sources:

Self-Driving Coalition for Safer Streets. (2018). In Gale Opposing Viewpoints in Context. Detroit: Gale. Retrieved from http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/PFVRVI153503144/OVIC?u=sunybuff_main&sid=OVIC&xid=935f2e5e