So yesterday the news featured stories about four crashes since September in California involving “self-driving” cars. Much was made of this.
Some was to be expected: From some quarters alarm that self-driving cars aren’t (gasp!) perfect. That they could get into accidents at all. How in the world was that possible?!
To which I have to say: Really?
The self-driving vehicles aren’t in full production yet. They’re still being tested, for crying out loud. In California, there are fewer than 50 such cars on the streets and until now they’re under the supervision of either Google or Delphi or whomever is testing them. Oh, and this testing has been going on longer than last September as the early trials were done in closed circuit courses before the programmers were confident enough in their product to release them under supervision to the streets.
Given the fact these companies are still testing these vehicles, and the further fact that they’re driving on streets populated with real-life drivers, it would have been more surprising to me that the self-driving cars hadn’t had so much as a scratch in all the time then the fact that there have been only four collisions.
That’s not to say, though, that Google and Delphi shouldn’t be more transparent regarding whatever accidents their cars get into. Of the four such fender benders, the companies claim they were all caused by the other driver/car, and that in only two of the four cases were the vehicles in their autonomous mode. Further, they state that the accidents happened at very low speeds and were very, very minor in nature. So no Terminator-level autonomous vehicle carnage to report, thank the Gods. Having said that, we have to take the company reports at face value as the actual accident information remains out of public reach.
Will Oremus for Slate.com provides an interesting and more detailed article regarding these four collisions and comes to many of the same conclusions I did above. If you’re as interested in self-driving cars as I am, I highly recommend you read it. You can find the article here:
Self-Driving Cars Have Been Getting Into Accidents. Is That A Problem?
If you’ve read my posts in any detail you know that I’m a big proponent of automated cars. I believe they are the future of transportation but I’m not foolish enough to believe they’ll arrive in some kind of otherworldly immaculate form, both accident and trouble free.
There will be (ahem) bumps along the road. There may even be injuries to passengers or, tragically, even fatalities. But every new transportation technology has had to contend with such issues and automobiles today, driven by flesh and blood humans, still get into many accidents on a daily basis and, yes, some do result in death.
Despite all this, I believe the future is bright for self-driving car and expect that in my lifetime I’ll see its full implementation and use on the roads and highways. I would go so far as to predict that when that happens, we’ll see a precipitous drop in accidents in general and an almost overnight elimination of traffic woes.
We’ll see.