Driverless Cars…
…….would you get into one…?
I still
remember there was a scene in the movie ‘Total Recall’ where a robot
driver drives a car. This happens in planet Mars in the future. What was once
in the realms of science fiction is coming closer and closer to reality.
Now we know that almost 90% of the flying by commercial aircrafts is done by autopilot.
So the question is can we replicate the same on ground…?
On air when
you are flying there is no traffic and autopilot for the most part does its
job. But the situation on ground is entirely different. There is traffic all
around us, pedestrians crossing, children playing, cows and street dogs (a
given in India), not to mention unruly drivers, road rage and what not……can
a computer navigate all this and take us safely to our destination.
The answer
I think is, it is IMPOSSIBLE. Now my skepticism does not arise from mere
speculation, it rests on the point of unpredictability, that human beings are
simply unpredictable. No matter how many cameras you install on your
driverless car, how advanced the AI is you cannot factor in the
unpredictability of humans. A driver may fall asleep at the wheel of his
car, he may be drunk, he might deliberately want to run you off the road, he
might jump a signal, not heed a stop sign, the possibilities are endless. It is
not a perfect world.
There is a
possibility in future about driverless cars but only in the case when all cars
are driven by computers. In this scenario the unpredictability factor can be
managed. Even then you must factor in certain situations wherein
unpredictability can arise such as children playing on the side of the road and
a ball hitting the car, a person suddenly crossing the road etc. I feel that no
matter what happens driverless cars are possible only in the perfect world.
No
matter how sophisticated a manufacturer claims them to be, I am not setting
foot inside a driverless car……how about you…???
ReplyDeleteFuture is Driverless autonomous cars, in fact the entire economy will run around that. We already achieved partial autonomy with Tesla, and there are more and more being developed, This will disrupt everything, Food delivery, commute, Travel, other deliveries, Fuel economy, shuttles, Car hires, and many more. Already you can hop on in one, in Vegas with Lyft. The day is not very far. But unfortunately several countries infrastructure is not.