Nowadays, nearly everyone is aware of the advent of self-driving cars. However, when will this technology be widely used in our daily life? What kinds of opportunities and challenges will be brought by self-driving cars? These might be some questions that most people are not able to answer. Recently, I read a book named Driverless: Intelligent Cars and the Road Ahead (Driverless), which provides an overview of the disruptive technologies that enable self-driving cars, and discuss the potential benefits and risks that could be caused by this technology.
Opportunities & Benefits
According to Driverless, all self-driving cars are going to be used as public transportation in the future, which means people do not need to purchase a car anymore, as they can ask a self-driving car to pick them up whenever they want. This will create a huge market for taxi company, and will also change the business model of car manufacturers. In term of benefits, the biggest one is safety. The fully use of self-driving cars will significantly reduce the number of car accidents, which is going to safe more than a million of human lives per year.
Challenges & Risks
There is no doubt that this new technology will disrupt many industry, and will also make hundreds of thousands of drivers lose their jobs. In addition, since self-driving cars are much safer than conventional cars, the automobile insurance companies are going to lose many individual customers, and therefore they need to provide some new insurance service as a response. Furthermore, a huge risk of using a self-driving car is that the car might be hacked by hackers, which will put the user in danger.
Conclusion
As a result, although the use of self-driving cars could bring many benefits to us, there are still many problems need to be solved. The authors of Driverless state that in the year of 2050, about 70% of newly sold cars will be self-driving cars. If this prediction was accurate, we are really not far away from a completely new society. Therefore, in order to be fully prepared for the future, I think it is necessary for us to get a better understanding of this new technology.
Reference
– Lipson H. & Kurman M., Driverless: Intelligent Cars and the Road Ahead, The MIT Press, 2016.
– https://www.sciencenews.org/article/five-challenges-self-driving-cars
I find the topic of self-driving cars extremely interesting. At the moment, it is hard to imagine cars driving on the road without an active driver behind the steering wheel, but this scene is closer within reach than we think. However, like you mentioned there are some challenges that need to be solved before this technology can become reality. To further elaborate on your arguments, I think another important challenge is the ethical dilemma faced by the car. Who would the car save in a critical/dangerous situation, the pedestrian or the passenger? The opinions about this question appear to vary (Psychologist Jean-François Bonnefon of the Toulouse School of Economics). I am interested to hear about the different opinions from others on this topic.
Reference:
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/moral-dilemma-could-put-brakes-driverless-cars
Yes Esmme you are right, ethical dilemma is a serious challenge as well. Thanks for sharing more information on this topic. I guess if a person choose to use a self-driving car, then he/she becomes the customer of that car. Since the customer already paid the money, the car should be in charge of the passenger’s safety. Of course this is just an answer purely considered from economic point of view. It is still hard to solve the ethical dilemma.
Interesting post Yanfeng. Do you think it will be possible to have self-driving cars in a bike-dominated city like Amsterdam? I think it would be difficult since self-driving cars are programmed to stop driving if a biker/person walks in front of the car. If bikers/people know that the car will always stop, then bikers could potentially become even more reckless in taking the right of way, since the car will have to stop anyways. This could possibly lead to more congestion in cities with a lot of foot/bike traffic.
Hi Shaffy that is a interesting point. I think it is still possible to use self-driving cars in Amsterdam, as long as new traffic regulations and auxiliary facilities are implemented. For example, we can use barriers to separate automobile lane and bike lane. In fact, I think the majorities will choose to use self-driving cars in the future, as the cost will be very low and it is also environmentally friendly. This means there might not be as many bikes as now existing in Amsterdam at that moment.
You raise a good point, Shaffy. How would would pedestrians and cyclist change their behaviour when they know that the car next to them is self-driving? Ford, for instance, made recently a rather interesting experiment of disguising a man as car seat in order to see how would people react when they realise there is no actual person on board the self-driving car (the presence of which is still required by law). They also used a big LED strip to communicate more precisely to passers-by what action the car is going to take (e.g accelerating from a stand still, etc.). It would be quite interesting to follow the result of that particular test and similar ones in the near future.
Reference:
https://techcrunch.com/2017/09/13/ford-disguised-a-man-as-a-car-seat-to-research-autonomous-driving/
Hey Yanfang, it’s a kind of interesting topic which is being talked about almost everywhere. I agree with of your opinion that with the individual demands of automobile decreasing, traditional vehicle producers, such as Ford, GM, Audi, BMW, Tesla, Nissan, and Mercedes-Benz, need to come up with new solutions to the public. Apparently, they all have been actively taken actions to create synergies through various forms such as partnerships, joint ventures, and investment of startups to seize the new market potentials. Apparently, with the upcoming novel perhaps wired and innovative stuff developing at an increasingly rapid steep, the next disruption for the automobile industry will come faster than ever before.
Here I found an interesting article which was closely linked to your content:
https://www.wired.com/2017/01/self-driving-cars-approach-auto-industry-races-rebuild/
Hi Yenfeng,
Interesting article!
I agree that the future of self driving cars will enable more ride sharing rather people actually owning a car. The pick up service is much more efficient, it saves people a lot of time and effort driving. I also see other opportunities arise with self-driving, such as changes in urban infrastructure and planning. With less people owning cars, this would in turn reduce traffic and many spaces used for parking. This allows better environment protection, as there is less air pollution and we can use nowadays parking space for parks or other planning.