Essay on The Future of Driverless Cars

Driverless cars in past days were only used as the topic or title in any sci-fi movie to get attraction from many viewers about how future technology might be. However, this technology of driverless cars has already being developed since 2018, and, in fact, has become a reality now. Just take a look at examples from Lexus, Mercedes, and BMW who have implemented this technology of driverless cars into their vehicles.

In addition to this, Tesla also has introduced its driverless Autopilot system on the roads of the United Kingdom. What’s more, Apple has also been working together with BMW for its own automated car as well. Completing this tough competition, Google has also been working for its own driverless car.

In reality, fully-driverless technology, up till now, is remain in an advanced testing phase. On the other hand, to some extent, this automated technology has turned out to become a thought within the past years.

This autonomous technology has also been getting huge investments across the world, particularly in the United Kingdom. The Government of the United Kingdom has recently established its new laws exactly in the year of 2015, intended for the testing driverless cars on its roads, and following these laws, the UK Government as well has invested for around 20 million Euros into this autonomous technology.

Hence, with that heavy interest and huge investment in this driverless technology, it is fair to say those self driverless cars are about to happen, yet, they would be much beyond than the people might have thought they would.

The Google Driverless Car

Driverless cars actually rely on a variety of sensors, in order to interact with the environment surrounding them. The Google Car contains its most visible rotating roof-top LIDAR, which is basically a camera that utilizes a display of 32, or else 64 lasers with a function to determine the distance between the objects, constructing up a map featured 3D at 200m range, and also allowing this driverless car to see the hazards on the road. This Google Car also supported with another feature named ‘eyes’ which is a typical camera that enables this driverless car to point out throughout the screen of the window (Woollaston, 2018).

The Issues Regarding Driverless Cars

Even though the driverless cars will surely need better, further linked infrastructure to be able to perform an effective function, but still, this autonomous cars will have to face a nigger, further unanticipated aspect, which is the human being.

The human being would present some issues for these driverless cars in the context of both drivers and pedestrians. In addition to this, the driverless cars will also have to deal with the unpredictable behavior presented by human beings as a significant issue meant for this autonomous technology.

Regardless of their complicated patterns, the driverless cars recently have no any side plan to manage the . The reason is obvious, the human drivers have the capability to interact with one another and also prevent the small mistakes to have appeared while driving. This thing is currently unable to be adopted by the driverless cars. Despite the fact that there was only little that could be performed to prevent the accident from Google Car, but it has been a reminder of how this could be the biggest obstacle for the driverless cars.

In addition to this, regardless of the human drivers would represent a risk for the driverless cars, the method that these driverless cars interact with the pedestrians has been raising some complicated ethical and moral questions for the manufacturers of the driverless cars to be addressed, along with the implications as well.

In fact, the driverless cars actually need to acknowledge the method that the pedestrians behave, while at the same time, also replicating the type of behavior that they would anticipate from a human driver. 

Hacking Issue of The Future of Driverless Cars

Hacking issue has also come along with these driverless cars. The reason is obvious, the driverless cars will surely pack in a bigger system ranges. For this reason, these types of cars are definitely vulnerable to hackers. Well, even though this might appears to become a future issue, but still, there is a great possibility that car-hacking would happen.

Worse than this, in the context of hacking, the driverless cars are highly vulnerable with the fact that there are some sensors in these autonomous cars that might be easily confused by simply adding some stickers to place on the road signs. Worryingly, as we have acknowledged that these road signs contained within a number of stop signs. In this point, the driverless cars could easily be tricked by the hackers to ignoring the signs such as stop signs, and of course, will definitely cause severe and potentially deadly consequences like accidents.

Some thoughts of The Future of Driverless Cars

One thing that needs to keep in mind is that, when the humans would no longer driving the cars, then it would potentially open up a number of possibilities in the context of how the driverless cars might be used and designed. However, there is an assumption which mentioned that driverless cars provide the solutions for two main big issues which are parking and traffic.

Now we all know that parking has been taking huge space across the countries. On the other hand, this autonomous technology is the latest technology that could be used for changing a little bit for the parking lane.

Still, the method that the driverless cars would react to pedestrians is a big issue that needed to be solved rather than focusing only on the parking issue. In fact, the recent generation of self-driving AI is quite potential, but, the ethical verdict along with the behavior of human drivers would be definitely complicated to be replicated by the driverless cars.

Hence, at least until these issues would be solved, then the fully driverless cars will still pose a severe dangerous hazard to other road users around the cars. Currently, the driverless cars will be safe only when they are tested and functioned together with other driverless cars setting (Kolodny & Schoolov, 2019).