As technology progresses, more companies are starting to make the push to develop driverless cars. Google was one of the first to start developing these cars in a project called Google X. The project has equipped numerous car with their self driving technology including the Toyota Prius, Lexus RX 450H and the Audi TT. Some of the cars developed by Google have driven over 300,000 miles without a single crash. Now, many car manufactures are developing their own models such as Volvo, BMW, Honda, and Tesla.
Tesla is the first to bring autonomous cars to the consumer by releasing the semi autonomous Model S. The car is semi autonomous as it can not be driven without attention and only has special features to provide slight aid while driving. The driver still is responsible for paying attention to the road. This semi autonomous technology is known as Autopilot which allows the car to steer within a lane, change between lanes, automatically park, and control speed and braking. All of these features are great but there is a big question to ask: can these cars be trusted? This question has been brought up tremendously in the past few days as an owner of one of these semi-autonomous Teslas was involved in a fatal accident. Many are wondering the cause off the accident and most are pointing fingers at Tesla. The accident by technicalities was a mistake on both ends as the driver was not paying attention and the car was not able to recognize a white pickup pulling out as it was blinded by the white light of the sun.
People are starting to say Tesla has reached its limits on driverless car technology and that they, along with other vehicle manufacturers, need to turn around. Autonomous cars are being viewed as unsafe and a danger to society but when looking at the statistics one might change their views. Car and Driver stated that in America, vehicle fatalities have reached an all time low of 1.13 deaths per 100 million driven. For Tesla this is the first fatality in 130 million miles on autonomous mode. Yes, even one fatality is not okay but with this very basic technology they are making great strides in decreasing the amount of deaths. As cars start to become fully autonomous, they will be able to further decrease the number of deaths per 100 million miles driven. Tesla along with other manufactures will be able to work together to make the roads safer and more trustworthy. As they continue to develop, they will still be able to solve the problems humans have as drivers as cars do not get tired, never has something to drink, and never argues with someone in the car.
Driverless car technology is only in its preliminary stages and will continue to develop as more data is collected and more people convert over to these cars. As these cars increase in popularity among drivers cars will be able to communicate with each other rather than monitoring other drivers and their behaviors. This will, in the end, make it safer as roads and highways will become a synchronized ecosystem of cars driving in uniform motion.
