The Upcoming Future of Cars
Abstract:
As time goes on, the technology in the world becomes more and more advanced. As of now, there are even things like self-driving cars that are being developed. Eventually, everyone would switch from manually driven cars to self-driven cars. However, why are self-driving cars such a big deal? There are many benefits that self-driving cars bring to the table. However, there are also downsides to self-driving cars. Just like how self-driving cars affect people positively, it also affects some people negatively. Although there are downsides to these cars, many people will still buy them. That is because as technology becomes more advanced, the drawbacks of these cars slowly begin to diminish.
Introduction:
There are many reasons as to why some people would say that self-driving cars are going to be revolutionary. That is because of all the benefits that a self-driving car has, such as safety, efficiency, convenience, and societal benefits. Even though self-driving cars has these benefits, there are also drawbacks to them. Some of the main drawbacks include prices, privacy concerns, security, and the potential for greater pollution. These drawbacks are some reasons why many people aren’t so willing to buy a self-driving car.
Methods:
There are many reasons as to why some people aren’t willing to buy a self-driving car. However, what is the main reason as to why people aren’t willing to buy one of these vehicles? In order to answer this question, many people were interviewed and asked what their main concerns of the self-driving cars were. Many people have different concerns regarding self-driving cars. However, there has been research on new systems and upgrades for self-driving cars that will potentially eliminate the concerns for these vehicles as well as make it better than it already is. The new system that is being developed is the new AI warning system and the other thing that is in development is an upgraded radar.
Results:
Based on the interviews that were conducted, we can see that from these two charts, the main concern for many people is the safety of being in one of these vehicles.
Many people believe that due to how these vehicles are mainly controlled by a system and not by the driver themselves, there may eventually be a glitch that occurs. Due to that one glitch, it may be the sole reason why the person in the car would be losing their lives. On the right chart we can see that the second most concern about self-driving cars is the need to want to be always in control. This is another main concern due to how many people believe that there will be times where the vehicle won’t know what it is doing and that it’ll be especially important for the driver to take over. Some fully don’t trust and want to be always in control in order to ensure their safety.
The development of the new Ai warning system was conducted by a team of researchers at the Technical University of Munich. What the new warning system does is that it warns the driver that they are about to approach a situation where the driver is going to have to take over. “The study showed that the AI is already capable of predicting potentially critical situations with better than 85 percent accuracy — up to seven seconds before they occur” (Kuhn, 2021). How this new system works is that it learns from the past situations where the system was pushed to its very limit. That is when the system signals the driver to intervene and take over the car.
Electrical engineers at the University of California San Diego developed a way that’ll improve the imaging capability of the existing radar sensors so that they accurately predict the shape and size of objects in the scene. “The team “hid” another vehicle using a fog machine and their system accurately predicted its 3D geometry” (Bharadia, 2020). This development is important because this new radar is also able to alleviate the problem of self-driving cars being unsafe. Even though the radar couldn’t completely process the hidden car, it still predicted its 3D geometry. By being able to at least predict the 3D geometry of the hidden car, it makes self-driving cars safer in the sense that the radar would be able to predict if there is a car in front of them or not. This radar is especially useful when the weather isn’t that great or when it’s too dark to see anything.
Discussion:
Many people say that one of the reasons why self-driving cars are so great is because they get a little bit more freedom and time as well as it being a lot safer than actually driving a car due to there being no human errors involved.
Here we can see two different tables that indicate the number of crashes or fatalities. As we can see on tables 2 and 5, the number of fatalities or number of reported crashes have been crashing. For example, on table 2 it shows us that the number of total crashes increases by 21,000 or 0.3% from the years 2018 and 2019. Although in table 5 it doesn’t show us from 2018 to 2019, it instead shows us from 2018 to 2019. We can see that for the urban percentage change column, all the percentages are positive. This means that over the course from 2010 – 2019, the number of fatalities has kept on increasing and haven’t decreased yet.
While other people know about the consequences that human errors have when it comes to driving, many believe that self-driving cars are just as bad when it comes to safety. Originally, many people were excited for the self-driving car. However, “But some of this enthusiasm waned after a woman walking a bicycle on a street in Tempe, Ariz., was fatally struck last year by a self-driving car being tested by Uber” (Hu, 2019). This is the reason why many people fear of being in a self-driving car and say that they wouldn’t buy one, because it’s not safe. Even though this may be true, with the technological advancements that the world has, this problem will soon be solved. With the new Ai warning system that is being developed as well as the upgraded radar, it allows the self-driving car to be safer than it originally was. The system would warn the driver to intervene when there’s a situation that the system can’t solve themselves and the radar would be able to detect if there are any vehicles that are in the way. With these improvements, it would be able to save many lives.
Although currently self-driving cars are still in the making, the upcoming future of cars is going to be revolutionary. It’s going to change the perspective and opinions of driving for everyone. Many people may have disagreements about the self-driving cars, but that’s for now. Self-driving cars aren’t going to be produced until years or maybe even decades later. In the future, technology is going to become even more advanced, and the problems of these vehicles will diminish.
References:
Ryan, M. The Future of Transportation: Ethical, Legal, Social and Economic Impacts of Self-driving Vehicles in the Year 2025. Sci Eng Ethics 26, 1185–1208 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-019-00130-2
NHTSA. “2019 Crash Fatality Data Released, Significant Improvements in Traffic Safety.” NHTSA, NHTSA, 18 Dec. 2020, www.nhtsa.gov/press-releases/roadway-fatalities-2019-fars.
Richter, Felix. “Infographic: Consumer Concerns About Self-Driving Cars.” Statista Infographics, 20 Mar. 2018, www.statista.com/chart/5950/concerns-about-self-driving-cars/.
University of California – San Diego. “Upgraded radar can enable self-driving cars to see clearly no matter the weather.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 17 November 2020. www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/11/201117192605.htm
Technical University of Munich (TUM). “New early warning system for self-driving cars: AI recognizes potentially critical traffic situations seven seconds in advance.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 30 March 2021. www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/03/210330121234.htm
Hu, Winnie. “Driverless Cars Arrive in New York City.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 6 Aug. 2019, www.nytimes.com/2019/08/06/nyregion/driverless-cars-new-york-city.html#:~:text=Six%20autonomous%20cars%20will%20shuttle,Brooklyn%20Navy%20Yard%20for%20free.&text=Driverless%20cars%20have%20rolled%20into,down%20Fifth%20Avenue%20anytime%20soon.
