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History of autonomous vehicles essay
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Introduction to self-driving cars
Not long ago, when people talking about self-driving cars, most of them would feel that is far away from us. But today, we can see from news that many IT companies are already created their own self-driving technologies. Self-driving cars can use a variety of technologies, like GPS, radar, computer version, to avoid obstacle and explore surrounding environments. In order to drive safely, self-driving technologies include drifting warning, blind-spot detectors, enhanced cruise control and self-parking. The first self-driving technologies can be traced from 1980s, with Carnegie Mellon University in 1984. At present, companies which are developing self-driving cars include Apple, Google, Facebook, Uber, Volvo, Ford, Tesla, Baidu. Why do so many top companies want to develop self-driving
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In July 12, The New York Times reported a news: “Inside the self-driving Tesla fatal accident”, which again caused enormous debates on whether self-driving cars should be legal or not.
Usually, the opponents would hold such opinion: “There are potential for self-driving cars to go wrong”. Like reported in that news, the Tesla self-driving car went wrong, then hit a fence, caused the death of the driver. All software would appear errors, like errors which would appear in our operating systems, errors are possible to appear in the self-driving systems. What’s more, in the real world, there are thousands upon thousands situation would happen.
The opponents would also against self-driving cars because of personal privacy. The obvious point is that, if you use vehicles which is entirely control by a computer, your movements are extremely easy to be tracked by the company or a third party. Operating systems could be hacked, self-driving cars also do. Self-driving cars are facing with the serious privacy
Self driving cars are not a good idea because they cause people to be lazy. This means that with self driving cars, your license wouldn’t mean a lot. To put it in another way, the drivers wouldn’t really depend on their license due to the self-driving car. So when you get pulled over by the police, you get a ticket for something the car did.
For a while, Self Driving Cars, have never really been a thought, to be thought about in the driving industry. It has always been the regular transportation, like regular cars, trains and other types of transportation for getting around. It was crazy enough to have thought about self driving cars, but now to start to make and produce self driving cars, is even crazier. The question is, is it safe to have these cars on the road? Also what kind of hazards might these vehicles be for people who decide to purchase them? Bob Lutz from (www.cnbc.com) states that “"The autonomous car doesn't drink, doesn't do drugs, doesn't text while driving, doesn't get road rage,". This shows that in Bob’s opinion, the self driving car, could be safer than the
Self-driving cars are now hitting a few roadways in America, and are showing people just a small glimpse into what could be the future of automobiles. Although Google’s self-driving cars are getting a lot of attention now, the idea of a self-driving car has been around for quite a while actually. These cars have been tested to their limits, but the American people have yet to adopt the technology into their everyday lives. A brief description of their history, how they work, and finally answer the question, will self-driving cars ever be adopted widely by the American public?
Companies like Google, Tesla and Nissan, among others, have announced over the past few years that their companies are trying to develop self-driving or autonomous cars [Ref. 1 and 2]. Self-driving cars can provide many benefits to the average consumer. Studies have shown that because computers can react and process information many times faster than a human being, crashes on streets and roads can be decreased with quick and consistent evasion maneuvers by the autonomous car. They can also help maximize fuel economy by calculating the most direct and fastest routes. When the driving of an autonomous car demonstrates that the computer can safely and reliably transport the passengers to their destination, this frees up the passengers to do other things that they would not normally be able to do if they were driving the car manually. For this reason, self-driving cars can help maximize productivity of their passengers.
Drunk driving, sleeping at the wheel, and loss of control of a vehicle could be a thing of the past when it comes to new innovations being made towards self-driving cars. When one thinks of a “self-driving” car, it means not having to pay attention to the actual driving and going about putting make-up on or playing on your phone while the car takes you where you want to go, sounds completely sci-fi, but it is likely to happen in the near future. With advances in technology, the car is able to use satellites, cameras, and sensors to take the driver where he or she needs to go. Many companies are researching, manufacturing, and testing different
While many people are all about autonomous cars and the benefits that they will bring to society, there are people who oppose driver less cars. Google has faced major censure from critics that are uneasy with the method that the automobile will u...
It might be hard to see where the self-driving car could have issues with safety but an interesting question arises when an accident is unavoidable. The question posed is “How should the car be programmed to act in the event of an unavoidable accident? Should it minimize the loss of life, even if it means sacrificing the occupants, or should it protect the occupants at all costs? Should it choose between these extremes at random?” (ArXiv). This is a very interesting question surrounding ethics. I’m not sure if there is a right answer to the question, which could stall the self-driving car industry. Before self-driving cars are mass produced a solution needs to be found to the question about unavoidable accidents. Although this question is a problem, there may not be a need to address the problem. It is said that “"driver error is believed to be the main reason behind over 90 percent of all crashes" with drunk driving, distracted drivers, failure to remain in one lane and falling to yield the right of way the main causes.” (Keating). Self-driving cars could eliminate those problems entirely and maybe with all cars on the road being self-driving cars, there would be no “unavoidable accidents”. Safety is the main issue the self-driving car is trying to solve in transportation and seems to do a good job at
In an article he wrote, he talks about why he never would ride in a self-driving car. He says that although he never drives and only gets rides from others, like a taxi, he still would never ride in a driverless car because the car does not have anything to lose if the car crashes, but people do so they are going to care about safety more [4]. The problem with looking at it that way it that he is expecting that having a reason to pay attention while driving it going to make the driver always pay attention and not make any mistakes, but they are just human. They are bound to make mistakes, for example, the fact that 90% of car accidents are caused by human just shows that humans are not perfect drivers no matter how much they have at stake. Also the car may not have anything to loss, but the company making the program that drives the car will. If the car that they make and sold to you, with a program installed that was designed to get you somewhere safely, were to get you hurt or killed that would make a large number of people question the companies technology. They do not want people to get injured and killed by their cars, for moral and marketing reasons, so they are going to be very sure that the car is safe before putting it on the market. Also people do not realize that the self-driving cars are getting put through more than just driving on normal
Self-driving cars are the wave of the future. There is much debate regarding the impact a self-driving car will have on our society and economy. Some experts believe fully autonomous vehicles will be on the road in the next 5-10 years (Anderson). This means a vehicle will be able to drive on the road without a driver or any passengers. Like any groundbreaking technology, there is a fear of the unforeseen problems. Therefore, there will need to be extensive testing before anyone can feel safe with a vehicle of this style on the road. It will also take time for this type of technology to become financially accessible to the masses, but again alike any technology with time it should be possible. Once the safety concern has been fully addressed
Automotive executives touting self-driving cars as a way to make commuting more productive or relaxing may want to consider another potential marketing pitch: safety (Hirschauge, 2016). The biggest reason why these cars will make a safer world is that accident rates will enormously drop. There is a lot of bad behavior a driver exhibit behind the wheel, and a computer is actually an ideal motorist. Since 81 percent of car crashes are the result of human error, computers would take a lot of danger out of the equation entirely. Also, some of the major causes of accidents are drivers who become ill at the time of driving. Some of the examples of this would be a seizure, heart attack, diabetic reactions, fainting, and high or low blood pressure. Autonomous cars will surely remedy these types of occurrences making us
As more testing is done on it and new technologies, such as blind spots monitoring systems and lane departure warnings are added, self driving cars are becoming a reality. No doubt about it, these cars are much safer than human drivers. Unlike human drivers who are prone to getting distracted and can get under the influence, the cars are programmed to be aware of their surroundings at all times. They are able to make quick, fast decisions without hesitations; in the road, a slightest bit of hesitation can be lethal. Since self driving cars have direct access to GPS, they are able to locate the quickest route to the user’s destination and if more self driving cars are put onto the streets, there would be less road congestion as each vehicle can coordinate to ensure that traffic doesn’t build up. With such advances in technology comes major benefits and with self driving cars comes the elimination of human error, the cause of a majority of road incidents; the option of using self driving cars should definitely be considered.
There is no denying that technology is advancing, however, would you like to sit in the passenger seat while your self-driving car chauffeur you around? Would you like to share your car with everyone? When you get ready to go somewhere you just call a car (like a taxi cab) to come get you and tell it where to take you. Recent articles say that Google has been developing a car and started testing it on the roads in 2012. Although the evolution in technology is advancing, self-driving cars may seem like a good idea, but we should take time to look at all aspects of these cars because they could be proven unnecessary, there will still be accidents, and they will take away jobs.
Self driving cars have the potential to drastically reduce the number of deaths and injuries that are results of car crashes and thus potentially improve the health of millions of Americans. Car crashes are one of the leading causes of death in the US with “37461 deaths in the US in 2016 and 2.4 million injuries” (Waymo 6). Additionally “94 percent of US crashes involve human error” (Waymo 6) which shows how much self driving cars could benefit society. Financially self driving cars also have the ability to save the US millions of dollars every year.
The arguments for autonomous driving are fully focused around those central ideas. Why allow human error to ruin anything else good simply because we don't want to give up control of our vehicles. The arguments for self-driving vehicles aren't bad arguments they simply don't take into account the simple fact that at this time, the technology is horribly unreliable and the loss of jobs would tank our already weak economy even more. Why should the best interests of the people be thrown out to benefit a flawed system? The more common autonomous driving becomes, the more of a bane on our society autonomous driving becomes.
There are many companies that are making self-driving cars. Some of them have already created working cars, and others are in the process of making them. There are some companies that we have already heard of, and are very famous, such as Tesla, Uber, and Apple. Other car companies, like Ford, Honda, and Toyota, are making them. They all want to have their partially self-driving cars on the road by 2021, and want to have cars that can drive themselves by