SELF DRIVING CARS - SAFER OR NOT?

image generated using gemini AI

The idea of self-driving cars is fascinating if you think about it: a car programmed to take you anywhere without having you behind the wheel. All one needs to do is sit and relax, and you are taken to your destination. Such a car has an updated innovation and should be safer and more reliable than the normal cars we have everywhere today.

When it comes to safety measures, I have seen cars that have sensors that will typically stop the car from hitting another car from behind. This technology is called the Automatic Emergency Braking. Once it gets too close to the other car, the car will simply come to a halt. With technologies like this in place, one will not be worried about a road accident, except there is a fault in the vehicle, which could also happen with a car that is not a self-driving car. The technology has far exceeded itself, where these cars not only come to a halt at the close of another car, but also turn 360 degrees against any object or obstacle.

The human factor is mostly the problem causing road accidents today; accidents are usually caused by distraction, fatigue, confusion or even a slow pace of reaction to an occurrence, while the computer does not face such challenges. A lot of car accidents today are usually a result of the driving loosing control, you find people sleeping on the wheel, or a driver driving carelessly at a very high speed on a very busy road.

A computerised car has already been programmed to drive safely and at a safe speed. Since it runs on a specific programme, the car may not decide to drive roughly or very fast like the way the human will do. Humans will sometimes drive under the influence of drugs and alcohol and will end up causing accidents. The development of self-driving cars to become mainstream, however, will cause a heavy decrease in road and motor accident significantly.

Just like every other electronic and appliances, a self-driven car should have a sort of insurance or warranty where it states that vehicles that gets involved in accidents due to the manufacturing fault will be fixed and the cost or expenses will be incurred by the owners, the manufacturer should be help responsible for crashes since the vehicles are expected to have sensors that should prevent them from going close to another vehicle, person or object, talk more of hitting. As such, the manufacturer will be held accountable and fined for it.

There are various developments to the self-driving cars that make them safer to be on the highway, these include sensors that creates 3d mapping of the surroundings, sensors that detect speed and distance of objects coming towards to and cameras that employ the use of AI tools to differentiate what a stop sign is or a pedestrian crossing. A self-driving car has two brake systems and two power systems; when one fails, the backup automatically starts working, which makes it even safer than the usually car.

Thank you for reading. My name is Hive account@rishagamo, and this is my response to the Hive Learners weekly Featured Content Week 215 Episode 02: “SELF DRIVING CARS”.