Why Self -Driving Cars Are the Future
You watch as the steering wheel moves on its own. The car stays in the lane and doesn’t make a mistake. You are thrilled to see the technology in action. Self-driving cars are the future of transportation. They will almost completely replace the driven cars on the road. Autonomous cars will save lives, save time, and will do better for our environment.
Car crashes are very frequent. According to Waymo, a self-driving car project by Google, 2.4 million people were seriously injured in 2015 from car crashes, and 1.35 million people died in 2016 from car crashes. Self-driving cars will definitely save lives. 94% of car crashes are caused by human error. If you don’t trust a computer with your life, that’s ok. Just think about how without self-driving cars we will have 100% of deaths (the amount we already have), but with self-driving cars, we will only have 6% of those deaths. Let’s say that a kid is in his automated car. He needs to pick up an emergency call from a family member. If that was a regularly driven car, the risk for that kid is going up, but in a self-driving vehicle, this risk would almost be non-existent. Also from Waymo: ⅔ people in their lifetimes are involved in a drunk driving car crash. That is a crazy number, and automated cars will definitely help reduce that. Even if the car malfunctions, there is usually a brake and acceleration pedal, with a steering wheel. Autonomous cars will definitely save lives.
Have you ever been stuck in traffic for what seems like hours on end? I know, it is such a bad experience. Well, self-driving cars can help with that. Because robots and AI are a lot more precise than humans, timing while driving will be much, much better, resulting in lower-traffic times and faster car drives. Cars will move exactly at the right time, relative to the car in front of them. Without this, traffic gets super long and tiring. Picture this, you are going to a job interview and traffic is terrible. Well, with self-driving cars, you could’ve made that job. 54 hours are wasted in traffic per person, and fewer crashes will also help with reducing traffic times. Imagine life without traffic!
Environmental reasons also show that self driving cars are going to be better. Many self driving cars, including cars made by the company Tesla are electric. This means that we will have less pollution in our air, and global warming will slow down. Also, automated cars as I said earlier are more efficient and will take less time to get to places. If a car is not running for as long, then not as many fumes will go into the air. The environment needs to be saved, and automated cars can help with that.