I’m usually not too interested in all the cool technologies that are out there or expected to be around in future years. However, this article on safer cars got my attention because of the unsafe driving habits and accidents that happen in our society on an everyday basis. This car is expected to behave as required to avoid crash when in potential danger of being crashed.
I’m not too optimistic of the idea of having a self-driving, crash-proof car because in order for it to operate in an expected manner there has to be an infrastructure capable of co-coordinating massive volume of sensitive information (eg. being able to recognize street signs, pedestrians, different type of vehicles, traffic signals, speed of surrounding cars) efficiently. If there’s lack of enough coordination, accident is inevitable.
Another potential problem that I see with this idea of introducing self-driving, crash-proof cars is that not every car on the street will be of the same type. If they are then the coordination might be easy. However, with all different type of cars-human operated, self-driven, and crash-proof, the probability of incurring accidents will be even bigger!
so crazy!! I read an article today that Google is doing the same thing with Lexus. The passenger sits with a laptop that has different colored boxes and shapes to indicate bikers, pedestrians, other cars and stop signs. It sounds really cool but obviously it is only at its beginning stages. I feel like it would probably make our streets safer/reduce car crashes.
i’m just curious as to how this is supposed to work. To prevent the crash, is the car made with a program that can guide and steer the vehicle itself along the road (auto pilot), or is it supposed to detect incoming hazards within a certain range (or does it have extra metal plating to absorb the full impact of the crash)?
This sounds like a great idea on the surface and we all know that there are a lot of bad drivers on the road……and that is the problem. Like the original post asks, what the other drivers?
If we assume that this tchnology hits the market soon, we can also assume it will be expensive so maybe 1 in every 1000 cars for example might have this technology. Can the technology account for the cars without this technology and their drivers? What about drivers under the influence and would the technology be “on” all the time or would the driver be able to disengage it? There are many factors I can think about off the top my head and they bring too many variables so I would be worried…. but it still sounds cool, a self driving car.