Recently, I have read news about self-driving cars. It's not completely a new thing, but in Bangladesh it's rare, I don't know even if it exists in our country. But self driving is something that I have heard a lot about these few months.
Like how big companies are working to make our life easier, and saw few videos where they are already testing self driving system on roads. Some of you might not know what is self-driving? Basically it's a car that can drive by itself and doesn't require a human driver.
These cars has many features such as sensors it can detect your presence, cameras to identify, and smart computer systems to understand the road and make decisions it's kinda like AI I guess, to be honest I find self-driving cars very innovative and it will surely become helpful in the future, because at this timeline, I feel people are not ready yet there are some serious problems we should think about.
What I have mostly seen is the cause of accidents are because we are human being and make mistakes, it's impossible to not make a mistake unelss you're a robot, so the biggest advantages of self-driving cars is safety.
Like the system won't ever get tired by hours of driving or get drunk or distracted or ever try to compete with other cars because they are not functioned like that. At this point it's a big "no" to careless driving.
For example, a normal human being would risk their and others life to use phone while driving. Not only that but also they drink and drive which causes dangerous accidents. A self-driving car will abide by the rules all the time and react quickly. For this reason, I persobally think that these cars could save many lives.
Another valid point is that, elderly people or disabled people who won't be able to drive then self-driving cars can help these people or even if someone is very sick and can't drive by his own then self-driving system can help them to travel easily without depending on others. So in many ways this is gonna make our life easier. Also, traffic jams will be reduced because they will maintain the traffic signals and keep proper distances.
Well, these do sound great, but I do not fully trust the technologies because it is also made by humans and as I said before human being will make mistakes. So, these self-driving cars are not perfect yet. The system might fail or get errors. What about broken roads how will it drive safely then? It's not that advanced yet but a human driver can detect it instantly and drive carefully in those situations. But for a machine it will create confusions.
Another issue which is hacking. These cars will be running on softwares, so many risks will remain, what if someone could hack into the system? This could be very dangerous for the passenger who will be inside the car. Also, big accidents can occur due to small technical errors.
Let's face the reality if an accident happens with self driving then who will be taking the responsibility? Like is it the car owners fault? or is it the car company's fault? Well, I would say the manufacturer should take responsibility because it was their job to make it perfect. Like they created the technology so they should be the one ensuring the safety.
In the end, my decision is to support self-driving cars. But I have my own conditions which are; if they developed the system carefully and they must give us 100% guaranteed safety, because our life comes first above everything. Also, it must be tested properly before allowing it for public use.
I know the intetion of creating self-drice is to make human life easier but still at this moment it's not the right time to release it because the roads are not safe, if I talk about Bangladesh then accidents are bound to happen with self drive system. Also, right now self driving system are not perfect yet, they need lots of improvement and features and there are many risks involved.
So, the best decision would be not to make it mainstream, after developing the law system in the countries and with strong rules, these technologies could be useful, and clear responsibility. Until then I believe that manual driving is the best option and it's more risk free.
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