Pros And Cons Of Autonomous Vehicles

According to Techopedia, an autonomous vehicle is a vehicle that can guide itself without human conduction. Autonomous cars are currently tested on the road, but are not yet commercially available. Many of these cars have capabilities such as the ability to park themselves, stop a car before a collision using GPS and distance sensors to maneuver the car on the road. The intended audience for autonomous technology are the automotive companies that have not invested money into autonomous cars yet and the authors are the scientists that are studying self-driving cars and see them as an improvement for the roadways. The scientists are qualified to provide this information since they are working at companies like Google, Uber, and other autonomous

Companies such as Uber, Google, and other autonomous car startups have spearheaded autonomous car research and now companies such as Volvo, Mercedes, and Tesla are working on totally autonomous vehicles as well as implementing autonomous features into their new models. Autonomous vehicles were always believed too futuristic but slowly their development is showing that the future is closer than was previously believed. With new products, there are always benefits and setbacks, but autonomous cars are showing to have a plethora of benefits. Research from Ohio University outlines some of the highlights for the support of autonomous

Autonomous cars will not have a driver and therefore the software will control all of the actions of the car. Human error is completely removed and this reduces the potential for accidents caused by driver error, drunk driving, or distracted drivers. It is believed that accidents will fall by 90% since autonomous cars will be able to communicate with other autonomous cars preventing collisions. Traffic is a huge problem especially in metropolitan areas. With no drivers in autonomous cars, this means that more people will be able to sit in the back of a car and work instead of wasting time just sitting in traffic. This should have positive economic benefits from the wellbeing of the employee to boosting the economy because of increased productivity. Along with more people gaining time in the car to work, rest, etc. traffic patterns will change with autonomous cars that can communicate with each other. People living in American urban areas spend almost 7 billion hours in traffic wasting 3.1 billion gallons of fuel and lost around $160 billion due to traffic congestion. Autonomous cars will be able to access traffic maps and monitor the roadways to pick the most efficient routes possible. This will result in less traffic, congestion, time, and fuel waste. The features of autonomous cars will shape the future of cities and how the infrastructure is designed and built. For example, parking garages are built with spaces that