Wouldn’t it be nice to drink your coffee, review for your meeting’s report and even fix your hair without ever having to worry about crashing your car into a tree or another vehicle?
We all know that a lot of people die because of automobile accidents. Every year, around 30,000 people are reported to get involved in car accidents in the US. About 10,000 of them die because of it. Human error is known to be the leading cause of these accidents. Human error may mean drunk driving, texting while driving, fatigue or speeding.
With the thought of people being bad drivers, companies have invested in a self-driving technology that could change the future of road vehicles. It could even take away the jobs of drivers around the world in the near future. Google and Uber have invested on automated driving technology while companies such as General Motors Co., Volkswagen AG’s Audi and Tesla Motors Inc. are planning to produce semi-automated driving vehicles soon.
Source: BMW
If the cars of the future can drive themselves, this could mean more time for you to cram your report on the way to work! Isn’t that life-saving?
There are concerns about using self-driving cars though. Is it safe to use? What if it could lead to more accidents?
Engineers have designed these self-driving cars to be safer tools to bring people to different places. Going home drunk won’t be a problem in the future. They have also designed these cars to be efficient in road utility, which means these cars can drive closer together to maximize the road space. These cars can also make gas usage more efficient since they were designed to control the amount of gas used to drive.
What makes self-driving cars more interesting is their ability to react faster than humans. Accidents can be avoided. This could lead to saving lives and lower car accidents in the future.
So far, Google had its self-driving cars drive around with people behind the wheels for more than a million miles already. Only 12 accidents were reported so far. This is a good sign for the future of automated vehicles. If engineers continue to improve these cars, there will be less car accidents in the future.
Source: Google Self-Driving Car Project
Driving manually may not even be the norm in the near future.
Source: Google Self-Driving Car Project
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