Land travel is evolving. New ideas and technologies are being developed to make it even easier, faster and safer. Which of them have a chance of going mainstream? Autonomous cars seem like a good bet.
Current state of things
It’s all legal. On June 29, 2011 Nevada was the very first state in the U.S. to pass a law allowing self-driving cars to operate on public roads. Police officers were advised to watch out for such vehicles while patrolling the streets. It seems like a potentially very dangerous decision to make. However, Google has proven many times already that its cars can easily keep up with human drivers. Their Priuses have finished over 200 000 miles without much trouble. Two passengers sit inside the car. One is behind the wheel just in case the car needs to be switched to manual mode. The other gathers data at the back. The company seems to be moving ahead of competition but saying that there is barely anyone else investing in this technology is far from the truth. Companies like Mercedes-Benz, Volvo, Nissan, Ford, Toyota (Lexus), Cadillac and Audi are all involved. Also, it's not just about cars doing all the work for the driver. Some intelligent technologies are being pushed out right now.
One of many cars used by Google with sensors mounted on top. (source: http://www.robotshop.com/blog/en/google-develops-autonomous-cars-becomes-skynet-928)
Audi TTS during a test run. (source: http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13746_7-10400833-48.html)
A car parking itself without the driver inside. (source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEn9bQkBXkE)
Using autonomous cars on race tracks. (source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1sk47FLAmg)
Adaptive cruise control. (source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVkVz79fgnY)
Video of Google’s car taking a nearly blind person to get food. (source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdgQpa1pUUE)
Audi TTS during a test run. (source: http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13746_7-10400833-48.html)
Current technologies
At CES 2013 Ford, along with a few other companies announced its take on this new trend. Their solution is called Fusion and incorporates adaptive cruise control and a lane-keeping system. Cruise control protects the car from hitting anyone in front by either warning a human driver, slowing the car down or stopping it entirely. A lane-keeping system steers the vehicle when it starts leaving its lane. Ford already has automatic parallel parking installed in his cars. Audi is thinking of something even better - parking not just while being in the car but also telling it to find an empty spot and go there while the driver is on his way to the store or home and come back later to pick him up. Tokyo in Japan will probably get Audi's technologies first because it's very congested.
A car parking itself without the driver inside. (source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEn9bQkBXkE)
Using autonomous cars on race tracks. (source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1sk47FLAmg)
Benefits
Most of the already used solutions were created for two important reasons: safety and comfort. They still require a person behind the wheel but that could change soon. In terms of comfort, a self-driving car could move itself in slow traffic freeing the passengers to do whatever they want or simply taking them anywhere they like. This also has the added benefit of reducing carbon emissions along with increasing durability and making commutes more economical.
It wouldn't matter who would be inside the car. People blocked from driving due to disorders of any kind could be present on the roads without being a threat.
Adaptive cruise control. (source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVkVz79fgnY)
Video of Google’s car taking a nearly blind person to get food. (source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdgQpa1pUUE)
Readiness for a switch
Are today's drivers ready for these new technologies? Surveys produce mixed results. In general, people seem weary and reserved. Only about 1 in 5 (data from carinsurance.com) would buy an autonomous car. However, this ratio changes when money comes into play. It turns out that car insurance costs could go down dramatically after switching. It is believed that over 90% of traffic accidents are caused by a human error. Having barely 10% of drivers in the U.S. buy autonomous cars would reduce the number of accidents by 211 000 annually and save many lives as well.
It isn’t just about money though. A moral shift needs to happen. How should a car react in a perilous situation or a situation with no good outcomes? Care about the passengers first or try to reduce the number of overall casualties on the road? This is something a programmer would have to hardcode into the car’s system, hopefully correctly. A human driver might care about himself more. It would be understandable even if that resulted in the death of others. Autonomous cars would be held to much higher standards. They cannot be allowed to drive after passing an hour-long test. Humans can adapt to various situations, including ones never experienced before. Introducing autonomous cars to other drivers on the road at a much greater scale can prove problematic due to these differences. An autonomous car will always obey the law without any exceptions. Trust could be a major hurdle to overcome also when we think about technology today. Computers get hacked with more or less damaging results. What if someone changed the reaction of a car so that it would drive of a cliff? Could we prevent that? Based on history - not always.
The future
There are already independent measurements made determining how well cruise control works in various car models and surely more tests will appear. Giving stars to cars depending on how safe they are during crashes is not enough. We are closer to employing self-driving cars at a large scale than we think. CES 2013 proved this. Audi showed that any car can be turned autonomous and not stand out on the road too much (in contrast to how Google’s cars look). New cars are heavily based on technology already and most won’t work at all without it. Current implementations of intelligent systems are constantly being checked on real roads as well as during special events, the DARP Challenge being one of them.
Comments
Some people say that a computer can’t handle car driving because it would have to take hundreds of parameters into account to make the right decision on the road in real-time. And I think that that’s the main reason why computers are more suited to drive cars than humans. They don’t get distracted during driving, they don’t think about things not related to driving ( about his boss making him angry at work, or what to buy your kid for Christmas etc.) ant they surely can make decisions quicker than any human. I think that cars driving on their own is not the end of development of transportation. If a computer is controlling your car that why can’t they communicate with one another. That will surely makes traffic more smooth. The system that will coordinate everything will know every vehicle destination so it would solve the problem of traffic jams.
Of course there are many legal issues to solve. The first and most important is who is responsible for any traffic accident that will occur. But that is easy to solve I think. Nowadays you can buy a car that parks on its own without your interaction. But when it hits any other car the person sitting in driver seat is responsible. And that how it should stay. And of course there should always be a way of human to take control of his car in case of computer malfunction for example. And that means obtaining driving license should still be obligatory in my opinion.
From the one side, there would be much less car accidents - which is obvious. Humans are not always 100% focused on the road and even small help from technology side would decrease they errors. Lets imagine that every car in the warsaw have such system and all cars are connected to each other. What I mean by connected is that they know where is which car and where it is going to. With not so complicated technology vehicles could decrease amount of traffic and calculate the best (fastest) way to the destination. There would be no more of impoliteness on the roads if most of people would trust such system.
From the other side, as you also mentioned such technology could be easly hacked. It don't have to drove of the cliff, it could only stop car or drove in the wrong direction. We cannot trust in 100% to this, like we don't trust navigation system (some people who trust it without thinking "woke up" at completly unknown for them location). I could say that we shouldn't trust our smatphones too. What would happen to most of users of for example android devices when a hacker inject to them a code which make smartphone to overheat the battery?
When it comes to new technology we should use common sense, we should trust it, but in the same time have in mind that this was created by human to and could expose us to danger.
Anyway, I think this is very important to develop such ideas, I'd use it and it's very nice replacement for current delivery systems and also much more realistic than drones (Amazon's idea) - both because of legal issues and state of technology.
Of course, I understand that autonomous cars can be dangerous - someone can hack into the car’s computer and take over control, or in some situations the car would probably not react as quickly and efficiently as a human being. These are considerable disadvantages. However, taking into account that some people drive like crazy or after drinking alcohol, an autonomous car is still a golden invention - it can make our roads safer.
But I'm not so sure if most people would be so eager to give total control over their car to the computer - certainly not me, I enjoy driving a car (including parking) too much to give it up :) And still cars with manual gearbox are far more popular in most countries than with automatic one, aren't they? Maybe in this case people like to feel in control even more than convenience, and maybe fully automated cars wouldn't become such hit when they're commonly available.
But if somebody actually would tell me they can give me a self-driving car I wouldn't be sure if I would dare try it out. As many other people (or so I believe) I would e scared to leave my safety and health in the hands of an autonomous care. I;m sure that this is just a matter of getting used to new idea, but still I believe it's quite a astounding thing at the moment. Therefore I don't think that it;s unusual for me and for other people to be intimidated by the idea of letting your car drive by itself.