A Car, Driving a Car?

You know how centuries ago people thought there would be flying cars? Well we haven’t gotten there yet, but Google has been working on producing a car that drives itself since 2009, hoping to have the finished product by 2020.

In all that time, Google’s cars have only been in sixteen accidents that were caused by the driver, not the self driving cars.

At first, cars were just going to be partially automatic. But because of the automobiles being responsible for some parts and not all, there would be conflict when a situation happens that technology can’t handle. So, they are going directly to a complete autonomous car.

“The vehicles we are going to put in our 2021 fully autonomous ride service will not have a steering wheel, they won’t have a brake pedal”, Ford’s Ken Washington said.

These cars will be used as a taxi service owned by the Ford company because it can’t drive anywhere just yet.

Rory Cellan-Jones, a technology correspondent, said, “Last year, I drove a Tesla in Autopilot mode down an American freeway – and found it a nerve-wracking experience. My hands hovered over the steering wheel and my foot over the brake, ready to act if needed.”

Jones emphasizes the need for trust in cars’ owners for this new technological advance to be successful. I mean c’mon you’re literally putting your life in the hands of a robot.

Tesla has already been experimenting with self driving cars in Asia and their crash rate has already decreased by forty percent. Since cars are getting safer, the insurance industry is being threatened because the premiums will plummet.

Instead of the driver being at fault of any accident, it would be the maker of that car.

“Presumably it will be how the computer was programmed, how the vehicle was instructed to operate, that would be causing that accident,” he said.

In a report by McKinsey & Co, they stated that self driving cars could eliminate ninety percent of our country’s accidents.

McKinsey & Co also believes that by 2050, autonomous vehicles will be the primary form of transportation.

According to The Atlantic, these cars could save 300,000 American lives every ten years, ultimately leading up to saving 1.5 million every fifty years.
https://www.google.com/amp/www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/39050538?client=safari
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.businessinsider.com/driverless-cars-could-negatively-affect-insurance-industry-2017-2
http://www.mckinsey.com/industries/automotive-and-assembly/our-insights/ten-ways-autonomous-driving-could-redefine-the-automotive-world
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/09/self-driving-cars-could-save-300000-lives-per-decade-in-america/407956/