To learn more about self-driving cars click on the title of this post for a link to the article with all of the information.
Tuesday, September 20, 2011
Will We Be Driving In The Future?
Researches in Berlin have created a car that can completely drive itself. It doesn't just keep the driver in his lane or stop when the car in front of it does; it literally drives itself around. The researchers let the car drive around the streets of Berlin without any human controlling it, and it drove around without any incidents. The car began as a $19,995 Volkswagen Passat, but after all the upgrades to make it drive itself it would cost a consumer $551,800. So you have to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars more to not be able to drive the car; that doesn't seem like a good deal. Raul Rojas, the head of the artificial intelligence research group at Berlin's Free University, says that when these cars become more available they would just be summoned by someone who needed a ride. So basically people would not need to own a car anymore. That is ridiculous. People are not going to give up owning cars. For many people, cars are prized possessions and driving them is enjoyable. Why would they want to give them up? I know that sitting around in a car that isn't mine and waiting for it get me to my destination does not seem appealing at all. I would much rather own a car that I choose and drive it however I want to. Not only will consumers not like these new cars, car insurance providers with despise them as well. If every car is self-driven then the amount of car crashes is certainly going to decrease. If there are fewer accidents then people are not going to pay for car insurance. So we wouldn't be seeing any more of those hilarious Geico commercials. There are many accidents on the roads today and something should probably be done about that, but self-driving cars are not the answer. They will not work mostly because consumers will not easily accept them.
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3 comments:
I would like to believe that the amount of car related accidents would decrease if car operation was given over to computer automation. However, considering the many glitches that exist in computer programing and the quite complex task of operating a car, I would believe that automated cars would not decrease the number of accidents. Perhaps one car could drive itself around w/o any issues for a significant amount of time. But that is one car. If the rate of failure is 1 in a million every time the car is operated, it is acceptable if there is only one such car. But when there are 8.6 million cars on the road each day (Wikipedia fact), the chance of an accident has just increased to 8.6 accidents every day. However, the one in a million number is probably a dream, and a higher frequency of failure is quite probable. Not a flawless argument, but an interesting idea about how well automated cars would actually perform.
I agree with both you and Kore. I think that a majority won't buy into automated cars. It just seems like way to big of a change for everyone to accept. It's way too inconvinient to have to wait for the car to come pick you up and drop you off. What if you're in a rush somewhere? Not only that, but this car is extremely expensive. Not very many will be able to pay for that. However, I am sure there will be many people buying into the idea of it being "new technology" that just seems cool to have. It becomes another way of showing off your wealth instead of buying a Ferrari. As for the sharing part, who wants to share their car? That would be a huge hassle having to organize times for pick up and drop off with the people you are sharing it with. The opportunity costs are pretty high. It just takes so much more effort and time to share a car and what if they all need the car at the same time? That creates more problems to go and find someone else's car to borrow. The article says there is no need to own a car because the automated cars will drop off its passenger and then drive to the next one. How long will it take to wait around? If these automated cars did make it into the market, I don't think it would have much of an affect on our lives. I definitely wouldn't buy into it.
I agree with what Kirsten said: while the idea of a car that will drive itself seems pretty cool, there are a lot of other factors to consider. First off would obviously be safety; there would have to be a no-fail manual override option should any of the technology malfunction. Also, as Colin said, much of the appeal of owning a car is actually driving it, being able to control the speed and the turns and the overall feel and handling of the car. However, I think having a car that drives itself could be potentially convenient. For example, when our parents drive us to school, we have some extra time in the car to tie our shoes or do some last minute studying or something else; when we drive ourselves, we can't exactly do that because we need to focus on driving. However, I'm sure the price tag on a car that drives itself will not be a light one.
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