The road to driverless cars

The future never looks exactly the way we envision it. Visions of the 21st century that were conceived in the 20th tend to get some things right and badly wrong in others. (See the ironic rallying cry of pop futurists: “Where’s my jetpack?”)

We may not live in the world of “The Jetsons,” but one technology that would fit there is well on its way to consumers in ours: the self-driving car.

The New York Times reports that the Department of Transportation has made its first formal policy statement on autonomous vehicles. Such cars are still in the prototype stages, but the government is trying to keep up with the rapid advances in this area. Richard Wallace, director of transportation systems analysis at the Center for Automotive Research, told The Times: “It’s not that [the Transportation Department is] trying to stop it. They’re trying to get by.” (1)

So far, Google has gone further with driverless vehicles, but General Motors is also developing the technology. Other companies are likely to follow, given the variety of automated technologies already present in current models, features we no longer find noteworthy, such as lane departure and blind spot warnings, automatic parking, self-adjusting speed controls, and stability systems. vehicle. .

The concept of a car driven by computers makes some people nervous because of its novelty. But technology is a continuum, not a binary choice between control by a human driver or by a machine.

We can look up for analogous situations. We don’t have pilotless planes yet. Even drones have human pilots; they are simply on the ground, instead of in the plane. But modern aircraft are highly automated and as a result are safer than ever.

Mid-air collisions involving commercial aircraft are almost unheard of now that automated systems alert pilots that they are on intercept routes. GPS and advanced mapping have made “controlled flight into terrain,” which is another name for flying into a mountain or other obstacle, extremely rare. Advances in instrument landing systems make it possible to take off and land in weather that not long ago would have prohibited flying. Without completely eliminating the human element, technological advances have mitigated many of the risks of flying.

The same goes for road trips. Have you ever tried to look for a small street sign on a dark road late at night? Or navigating an area unknown to you without a passenger to read a map? It’s much easier and safer when your car’s navigation system tells you exactly where to turn. Adaptive cruise control keeps me at a safe following distance, slowing down when I get too close to the car in front of me. Lane departure warning systems can tell a driver when they are swerving, although in my experience, there are still plenty of false alarms. That’s not to mention the built-in computers that diagnose engine problems and call for assistance in the event of an accident, or the standard (not quite yet) of including a rear view camera in new vehicles.

As with pilots, human drivers are always at risk of error, and computers are always at risk of crashing. But as freeway speeds increase in some parts of the country and summer ushers in a season of family road trips, technology is helping human drivers navigate their routes as safely as possible.

Do completely driverless cars seem far-fetched? Maybe. But if I fly into Orlando’s sprawling airport, a driverless train will take me from the departure gate to the main terminal building. No one seems to see anything strange about it. We all take cruise control for granted these days; semi-autonomous cars are a further step on the existing path. Fully autonomous cars are a few steps further. Like any new technology, it will take some getting used to.

Technology is making driving safer in all sorts of ways. From seat belts to airbags to computerized anti-skid systems, we have fewer accidents than we did when I was a kid, and we emerge unscathed from many more of those that do. Fatalities-per-miles-traveled statistics tell the story: The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration shows a sharp drop in fatality rates over the past 20 years, from 1.73 deaths per 100 million miles traveled in 1994. to 1.10 deaths per 100 million VMT in 2011 (2)

Advance at full speed with the latest technologies. They will get us where we want to go more reliably and safely than ever before.

Sources:

1) The New York Times, “Autonomous Vehicle Testing Gains US Support.”

2) NHTSA, “Deaths and Mortality Rates, 1994 – 2011”