Imagine a world where you can get in your car without the worry of driving alongside drunks and teenagers. The dream we once thought was impossible is now becoming a reality, with many large companies including Toyota, BMW, Audi, and Google, currently investing in the development of this contraption. What is a driverless car? It is an automobile run by an autopilot that allows passengers to travel safely and quickly to their destination with minimal to no human control. The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers predicts that by the year 2040, our roads will be populated with autonomous vehicles, with up to 75% of all cars being driverless (Newcomb, 2012). As human civilization advances technologically on a daily basis, we are becoming less dependent on people and more dependent on technology.
The primary concern with transportation is safety; hence the most obvious and largest benefit to the replacement of regular cars with self-driving cars is the decrease in traffic collisions. "Ninety percent of our road accidents are related to bad driving behavior; driving recklessly and speeding under the influence of alcohol, changing lanes without signaling, driving on the hard shoulder and passing through red lights." -Lt Gen Dahi Khalfan Commander in chief of the Dubai Police (Olarte, 2011).
A major issue for drivers today is congestion. Picture the 400 highway at 7 AM on a weekday. When a car brakes, the driver behind takes a couple of seconds to react and stop. Now this goes on and on, causing heavy traffic and wasting everyone's irreplaceable time. Autonomous cars are expected to have a completely revamped traffic system, one lacking traffic lights and stop signs. Vehicles will be capable of communicating with each other by transferring crucial information via sensors, allowing them to predict their expected positions, minimizing the spaces between them. With the small distances between cars and the non-stop flow of traffic, a substantial amount of time will be saved during trips and congestion will be considerably alleviated.
Autonomous vehicles will also save owners insurance money because as the rate of incidents drops, vehicle insurance will be viewed as optional rather than obligatory. In addition, this innovation will save the costumer fuel money by reducing the frequency of braking and acceleration, which has an adverse effect on fuel consumption. A while after the integration of this technology into our daily lives, there will be an inevitable loss of driving related jobs. But as the saying goes, when one door closes another opens, and these robots aren't going to build themselves.
The immediate effect will undoubtedly lead to a loss of jobs, but with the success of the production, in the long term new jobs will appear and consequently completely fresh industries as well. With this huge development in electronics, admittedly garage mechanics and taxi drivers might struggle with income, but software engineers and programmers are going to be in demand more than ever, and thus economic balance is restored. There are countless examples of such occurrences in history, a notable one being the industrial revolution. Just like today, people back then were also worried about losing their occupations to machinery. But the introduction of steam engines and the replacement of physical labor with machine work pushed farmers towards other professions that were themselves created by the new technology, and thus there was an unprecedented blossoming in the economy.
All the benefits I have mentioned, the unparalleled road safety, the smooth and quick ride, the low expenses and many more outweigh the very scarce negatives. Self-driving cars will revolutionize the auto-industry and will be a turning point in our lives. Soon enough driver licenses will cease to exist, and elderly people, children, and handicapped persons will no longer struggle with land transportation. Therefore, in conclusion, I believe that self-driving cars are a thing of our future and we should embrace the changes.