Is Autonomous Driving Safer Than Driving By Yourself?
The new drive for the automobile industry is to bring autonomous cars to public roads. Driverless cars are designed to avoid collisions with other vehicles on the road and maintain a safe distance from other people. This will result in fewer road accidents and the resulting injuries, and deaths.
Why driverless cars are becoming imperative?
● Safety
Safety is the most important point of why automated cars exist in the first place. 94% of car crashes occur due to human errors. These self-driving vehicles can remove human error and keep people on the roads and inside the vehicles safe. You might realize this fact when you learn that the year 2018 has seen more than 36000 people die in car crashes in the US alone.
● The social and economic advantage
In 2010, car crashes cost $242 billion in economic activity including a loss of $57.6 billion against workplace productivity. It also includes a loss of $594 billion against loss of life or a handicapped life. Eradicating human error and car crashes would eliminate these costs.
● Convenience and efficiency
Automation of vehicles might also result in smoother traffic flow without any congestions. According to a study in 2014, people in the US spend approximately 6.9 billion hours in traffic. This cuts their work and family time and increases vehicle emission and fuel costs. With this automation, the money and time spent on commuting can be put somewhere else for more productivity. Another study suggested more than 50 minutes per day can be saved just from commuting.
● Mobility
Driverless cars are a blessing in disguise for the people who are over 65 or have some disability. There are more than 49 million people in the US who are over 65 and over 53 million people who have some kind of disability. The automated vehicles can create job opportunities for more than 2 million people in the country.
Chances of collisions and to avoid collisions
On the paper, the idea seems to be very tempting, to say the least. But most of the comparisons are drawn between automated cars and human-driven vehicles have been unjust.
One cannot argue with the statistics associated with the car crashes. Over 90% of the crashes in the US occur due to driver error. And by introducing driverless cars, just within a couple of years, more people can be saved than the country lost in the Vietnam War.
But to be honest, this is not enough information to assess that automated cars are better than human driven-cars at crashes. We cannot ignore the data available on the number of collisions that didn’t happen. There is a chance of 1 collision per a billion chance of crashing.
Forgetting the non-event is pretty easy and quick for people even when you are noticing closely. To calculate the collision incidents, researchers have to find out the non-collision rate of human drivers and driverless cars.
Comparing the adequate statistics
The statistics regarding crashes of human-driven vehicles are gathered from a range of different driving situations. These numbers are directly associated with the various types of roads. Some of these conditions include driving in the rain, dirty roads, or in the snow on steep slopes.
Most of the data for self-driving cars come from the US and mostly in good weather. A large amount of this data comes from multi-lane highways and uni-directional roads. When you are driving on such roads you only have one job to do; to stay in your lane and don’t get too close to the vehicle that is in front of you.
Driverless cars are pretty good in such conditions. But humans are equally good as well. When the states allow these self-driving vehicles widely, the date available on these cars will grow significantly. But this is not going to happen very soon. So we have a very small amount of data available to assess and compare both these vehicles.
Without a doubt, driverless cars don’t have any emotions like anger, frustration, or tiredness and they don’t get drunk either. But they also can’t react to an uncertain situation with the same anticipation and skill of a human driver. Therefore, it suggests that both driving styles need to work in tandem.
These driverless cars also don’t have the foresight to avoid any potential peril. They drive moment by moment and cannot think ahead to avoid any possible event.
A self-driving system’s vision is finite and to it, a bus shelter full of people might be similar to an empty cornfield. Choosing what to do in an emergency can be difficult for humans but many drivers have sacrificed themselves for others.
Newer tech has newer concerns
An automated system doesn’t have any experience of the world nor its understanding. Therefore, it cannot assess a situation ahead of time as a human driver can. We still can’t particularly program a machine in advance to take care of certain imaginable circumstances or scenarios.
Those who love driving cars will find this idea of driverless cars a lot less charming. But we have an example from the aviation industry with an introduction of new technology or automated systems, adverse events occur. This slight uptick might discourage the policymakers and the general public to deviate from the new technology.
Here is some more information you need to look at, just as a food for thought!
Final Thoughts
Therefore, the comparisons between driverless cars and human-driven cars must be fair. No matter what the industry trend is, conventional human-driven cars will stay on the roads for long. Cars with new tech won’t be cheap either so not all of them can afford these driverless cars.
In such a scenario, the question is; How can driverless vehicles and people mix on the road together? How to put it more bluntly who will be held responsible for any collisions between an automated and a conventional car.
For fairly assessing driverless cars on their promise for safety, we need to compare the date with a proper lead. It's not a simple 1-on-1 swap if you replace a human with a self-driving system.