The future of technology is upon us. More than 1.2 million people die every year in traffic related accidents. Autonomous cars are going to change the world, and not just positively, but negatively as well. An autonomous car is a car that does not require a driver. It is a technology that is on the rise as the future comes closer and closer to reality. The car can drive without the input from a driver, such as steering, acceleration, applying the brakes, etc. The car was an idea back in 2014 and prior and it became a reality in 2015. Google had made the first autonomous car ever, and it was named the “Firefly”. When we think about cars that are driving us around, we wonder, are we going to have control? Are these cars going to take us where we want to go? Are these cars going to take over the world? Will this lead to the reality of “I-Robot”? 

If you look far enough into history, you can see that robots started to appear in concepts and drawings in the 4th century BC. The first prosthetic arm was brought into reality in the early 16th century. The first industrial robotic arm was created and fully functional by George Devol in the 1960s. We went from robotic arms, to entire robots, to unmanned aerial vehicles, to the production of autonomous cars. The robot arm did a series of simple tasks. We give it instructions; the arm follows those instructions. The same ideology can be applied to UAVs, and autonomous cars. We have come a long way from not having any robotics or mechanics at all to coming close to completing the mass production of autonomous cars. Along with the technological advancements, many changes will be made to society in terms of law, process, and management. The road systems will be different, as they need to be improved to better accommodate the potential mass of autonomous cars. Laws will be made to protect companies and protect citizens from lawsuits that may occur. But hopefully the biggest change will be to the health status. The autonomous cars will make some changes in pollution, hopefully for the better, and the government wants to ensure that. Researchers have started outlining laws for the public health agenda and the impacts made by these vehicles. “…automated driving has the capacity to reduce these emissions through efficiencies in driving speeds and avoidance of traffic congestion..” (Autonomous). The way the new car will tackle emissions issues is by driving efficient. That means constant rates of speed, precision driving, and limitation to what is released from the vehicle in terms of gasses.

The autonomous car brings several solutions to the table when it comes to lowering the rate of death, caused by traffic accidents, and not sending us into a deeper national debt. Safety is by far the most important factor of this new idea. Why would we build self-driving cars if they do not lower the death rate? One of the most common causes of traffic accidents is the driver being distracted, an unlikely characteristic of the new autonomous car. For example, the vehicle would be focused only on the road and the cars around it. It would not be doing any of the actions a distracted driver would do. “…the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA). It claims that self-driving cars will save lives. Over 30,000 die in cars each year in six million or so accidents, and more than 85 percent of those accidents and deaths are caused by human error, DUI, distraction, speeding or just recklessness (Frenzel)”. This new technology would save so many people every year. People that might still be alive today if we had this technology years and years ago. Another great benefit of this new tech is the number of jobs it will open, despite the number of jobs that will be given to machine. Not only will we need workers to manage the manufacturing of these cars, but new road management companies will sprout. Several states also require a licensed driver behind the wheel of a vehicle in motion. “Each year, the average American adult spends 100 hours commuting, time that could otherwise be spent relaxing, reading, or even working (Urmson)”. Americans spend so much time on the road that it is very safe to say that we lose money, time, and resources by driving so much. The autonomous car could save us most of that time, money, and resources. Many of today’s cars, that are required to have a driver, already have so many innovative new technologies that are utilized by the car alone. “My new Mazda CX-5 SUV has most of them, like backup camera, adaptive cruise control, automatic braking, lane departure warning, blind spot detection (Frenzel)”. These technologies will all hopefully be implemented into the autonomous car.  

The autonomous car can bring many problems to the table as well, such as production costs, amendments or additions to the laws of driving, transportation, road systems. “There is considerable uncertainty concerning autonomous vehicle benefits, costs and travel impacts. Advocates claim that they will provide large benefits that offset costs, but they will require additional equipment, services and maintenance costs that will probably total hundreds or thousands of dollars per vehicle-year, and many of their benefits are unproven (Litman)”. Researchers are basically saying that while the cost of production of an autonomous car may be high, the benefits of that car will offset those costs. They will prove to be worth the cost. But as of 2014, those benefits have yet to be proven. The additional systems the new car would need such as GPS, sensors, etc, would cost from $500-$2000 each. That should give you an idea of what an entire car alone would cost. Another problem to consider is the scenario of an autonomous car getting into an accident with a non-autonomous car. The driver of the car can still be distracted or intoxicated. Thus leading to an accident with an autonomous car. While it may be very unlikely for two autonomous cars to collide, it is likely for a car with a driver in it to collide with an autonomous car. For example, “Last month, as one of Google’s self-driving cars approached a crosswalk, it did what it was supposed to do when it slowed to allow a pedestrian to cross, prompting its “safety driver” to apply the brakes. The pedestrian was fine, but not so much Google’s car, which was hit from behind by a human-driven sedan” (Richtell). From there, we get into the causes of the accident, who is to blame, who is to pay, etc. The economy would also need to be changed along with the road systems and society. “The market for driverless cars does not just depend on manufacturers persuading legislatures to pass bills and a reluctant public to give up driving. For driverless cars to realize their commercial potential, they have to fit with the current automobility system or the system needs to be reconfigured to accommodate a novel entity” (Aroujo). Not only would the market have to come up with a new process, but the public must also be on board with the necessary changes. Jobs will be lost in this change, but as the saying goes, one door closes and another door opens. The logic can be applied here because companies such as Google and Aurora Innovation, are hiring! These companies are hiring drivers for the new autonomous cars because in some states, vehicles in motion MUST have a licensed driver behind the wheel. “Aurora isn't the only company hiring people to sit behind the steering wheel of a self-driving car and monitor it as it cruises through the city. Uber has been hiring Development Vehicle Operators since it started testing its fleet more than a year ago” (Aupperlee). Fortunately, this new strand of jobs does not end here.

The new autonomous car is going to bring so many innovative technologies onto the road. There are many examples of cars with artificial intelligence technology like self-park, auto-stop, and more. Google started with the Firefly in 2015, and many other companies followed. What exactly makes a car a self-driving car? Well for instance, its going to be equipped with tech for mapping and navigation, real time syncing with traffic to keep up with accidents and the speed limit. The car will also have hardware such as LIDAR, which is a system that detects light and senses the 360 degree surrounding up to 60 m, RADAR, video cameras, position sensors, and more (Azmat). The technology will be very expensive, but if the statistics are correct, it has the potential to save over 30,000 live every year. Mercedes-Benz has plans to come out with a long haul truck that they claim will be the truck of the future. The Mercedes-Benz Future Truck 2025 will have all of the technology as previously mentioned above, along with more. This technology is not only for cars and the everyday citizen, it will spread out to our resource distribution and industrial transportation system (Mercedes-Benz). This technology will also show up in racing. While society is using the autonomous car for transportation and distribution purposes, Chris Gerdes and his team at Stanford are working on self-driving racecars in order to witness the machine push itself to the limits of its physical performance.

The future of technology is upon us. We cannot avoid it or procrastinate the acceptance anymore. The autonomous car will soon be a technology known all over the world. “Google is currently prototyping the operation of fully autonomous driving vehicles on public roads in the USA, and US states such as California, Nevada, Florida, and Michigan have started to approve a driving license for autonomous cars under new laws and regulations (Koo)”. The autonomous life is practically taking over the nation, state by state. People will start making more money while utilizing the time gained due to the lack of driving required in everyday life. Hopefully, to lower the death rate of traffic related accidents, and to keep us from falling into a deeper debt, this is exactly what we need.
