More car companies are introducing self-driving technology into their cars. Tesla was the first to introduce it and it worked reasonably well until a spate of fatal accidents put the technology into bad light. The accidents were difficult to comprehend as the drivers were not fully in control. In the most recent case in America, the car veered into a barrier and killed the driver. During the investigation it was discovered that the low angle of the sun light gave incorrect data to the camera causing the car to interpret the signal as a potential obstacle forcing the car to veer. Had the driver placed his hands on the steering wheel during that moment he could have prevented the accident. The system is definitely not perfect and there will be many early teething problems. On the flip side Tesla has claimed and also proven on numerous occasions where the self driving system saved the driver by intervening when it predicted a potential accident. The public always remember on the accidents but do not give sufficient credit to how many times the self driving system saved drivers from accidents.
Mercedes and Lexus also introduced their self-driving technology and so did Volvo. The confidence is not quite there yet since it is likely to have many more accidents before the engineers can fix programming bugs out of the system. The only way for it to work is to have adequate field tests however it is still impossible to program out the biggest problem which is humans! So long as there are humans driving on the same roads as a self driving car the compute will not be able to predict 100% what a human will do. The human mind is an unpredictable factor which the computer cannot ever understand.
The safest way to have self driving cars is to have all the car on the road be self driving. The cars can communicate with one another on a network allowing each other to know each other's proximity, speed, direction and intended movements. With this in place the self driving cars will be far safer than humans driving the cars. I believe the accident rate will be far lower and the transport efficiency will be much greater than what it is now. The traffic problems will be reduced significantly. this kind of system will only be possible if all car companies work are willing to cooperate and work on the same network system. So far it looks like a dream because car companies have a difficulty agreeing on working same charging systems for electric cars. Working on an common network will be even more difficult since they all have their own ideas and agendas.
Self-driving cars are definitely the future, the human element must be taken out and also there must be sufficient trust in the system. I doubt this will happen in the near future since many people still enjoy driving and taking away the choice of driving will be like taking away a simple human right.
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