A few months ago, the media was abuzz with news of the fatal car accident involving a self-driving Tesla car. This incident only served to amplify the ongoing argument going on regarding whether our roads would be safer with self-driving cars. The sad incident has unsurprisingly given the folks against AI-driven cars a basis for their argument, and very well so as the loss of life is a very serious issue that should not be taken lightly, but what they fail to realize is that accidents are currently an inevitable part of the driving experience. Sure neither drivers involved in the accident were at fault, but statistically, there are at least 3000 car crashes a day involving man-driven cars, and there is barely a decibel of noise created by anyone who wasn't related to those adversely affected by the incident.

Who made the decision that accidents involving machines should take precedence over ones involving humans?? Why are accidents involving man-driven cars considered 'okay', but once a self-driving car is involved it becomes nationwide news? Now to avoid misinterpretation, I would like to point out that I do not think that the accident should not be looked into, but rather than critics calling Tesla out, and clamoring for self-driving cars to be kicked off the road, the conversation should instead be geared towards making this technology more efficient and less prone to accidents and casualties. In fact, if we look at this situation logically, without any underlying sentiment, it is safe to say that completely replacing every manually controlled car on the road with self-driving cars would be to the benefit of humankind. The rates of car crashes and car-related accidents while not completely eliminated would be significantly reduced, but I do not think that is enough. Rather than either pushing for the influx of self-driving cars or the elimination of them, we should work towards making our infrastructure more accommodating to them.

Our current infrastructure is one that relies heavily on human interaction and decision to function as properly as it can, and I believe that significantly adjusting who is in college requires a reassessment of this infrastructure. For example, construction workers that give drivers hand signals to control traffic could be given devices and beacons that give out electromagnetic waves that can signal to these cars whether to stop or move. Also making these cars easily recognizable by painting the a specific color, or something of the sort that would help other cars driven by humans recognize that there is a self-driving car around them, causing them to drive differently, similar to the way one might adjust his driving technique when around a student driver would also help reduce casualties.Slight changes such as this would undoubtedly geometrically increase the efficiency of self-driving cars. The benefits of self-driving cars also far outweigh the minimal risks, giving mobility to those who are too young to drive, disabled and old people, and those too incapacitated to drive. People who also want to have conversations, make phone calls, or perform any other task while driving can also now do this while getting to their destination without endangering the society.

In the end, it all boils down to a moral imperative we have to reduce the amount of deaths caused by cars. In the words of the wonderful mind of Albert Einstein, "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results", therefore if we hope to significantly reduce the casualties caused on the road, something has to be done differently, and I strongly believe that eliminating human error through the use of self-driving cars might very well be the answer to that problem. Instead of trying to enforce rules, it would be more efficient to make sure these rules can't be broken, and in this scenario, self-driving cars provide the ability to do do. Sure it isn't a crease free solution, and there is definitely room for improvement on this new technology, but Rome wasn't built in a day, and the faster we all come together to better this obvious solution to a problem, the faster our Rome can become a reality.