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Driving accidents will become a thing of the past when these things hit the road. Self driving cars are said to bring down driving accidents by 90% while accident and health related costs of around $190 billion yearly. While predicted that in the future insurance companies will survey technical failures rather than human error.
Google’s concept of autonomous cars uses very high technology to allow the car can practically see and map its surroundings, applying throttle and brake accordingly. The LIDAR system on the roof of the car rotates rapidly sending light to reflect off surfaces to then analyze it. Radar which is already used in most modern cars for parking, allows the car to see front and back detecting how close and how much throttle to increase.
Other than Google, Tesla plans to update the Tesla Model S software to allowing it to ‘autopilot’ on the highway, shift lanes and maneuver. Suddenly this lead to regulation issues where a large statistical proof will be required. By 2020 many car companies such as Audi, GM, Nissan, BMW and Mercedes-Benz expect to release self-driving cars of their own.
Although still in the making and far from done, self driving cars will provide more leisure to commuters allowing them make a phone call, have breakfast or read in meantime. Parking space would decrease because the AI could do so more efficiently. The speed limit would be higher and because driving will become accident free cars could remove the unnecessary airbags and change their steel-titanium infrastructure to lighter aluminum, increasing mileage and saving the planet.
But autonomous have their drawbacks like the loss of driving jobs, possible cyber attacks and most interestingly the trolley problem. At the brink of an unavoidable accident what would the car do and would it be ethical.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lidar
http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/189486-how-googles-self-driving-cars-detect-and-avoid-obstacles
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_car
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem
