Sunday Poll: Do You Think Driverless Cars Are Safe?
Self-driving autonomous driverless cars are quickly becoming a reality. New Tesla’s have autopilot and Uber is testing in Pittsburgh:
The first Uber car that doesn’t need a driver has hit the streets.
The ride-hailing behemoth announced in a blog post Thursday that it has begun testing a self-driving car in Pittsburgh, home of the company’s nascent Advanced Technologies Center.
The car, a Ford Fusion Hybrid with a roof-full of radar, lasers and cameras, will be collecting road-mapping data as well as testing its real-world traffic reactions. Uber’s interest in autonomous car technology dates to a year ago, when the $60 billion start-up began hiring Carnegie Mellon University robotics experts to staff its new center not far from the Pittsburgh-based school.
As with all self-driving cars that are approved for testing on public roads, Uber’s vehicle will have a safety driver who can take over the controls should the situation demand it. (USA Today)
I’m curious to experience the technology, but I’d be nervous. So this is the subject of today’s poll:
This is based on today’s technology — not five years in the future. The poll closes as 8pm tonight. No new post tomorrow, have a happy Memorial Day!
— Steve Patterson
Totally “safe”? No. More dangerous than current vehicles / options? No. NO mechanical system is (or will be) 100% error free, there will always be “accidents”, crashes and “failures”. We just have to decide, as a society, what an acceptable level of risk we can tolerate and will accept. And, unfortunately, that decision will most likely be made in court, by lawyers chasing deep pockets . . .
Better question: Do you think human-driven cars are safe? For whom?
Lets look at the 100 years of data we’ve collected to see…
I think we can answer definitively now that human-driven cars are absolutely unsafe, and under no circumstances should a human be permitted to control a car.
Do you see what I did there?
I’m a bit skeptical that we’ll see any significant degree of fully autonomous vehicles on the roads anytime soon, but I do think it is an area that will continue to grow and I wish Saint Louis would be able to take advantage of R&D like rust-belt peers Pittsburgh and Detroit are doing. (Toyota in Ann Arbor and Google in Novi.)
Enterprise would be the logical local power that could play a major role in autonomous vehicle research, but it appears it is content to plan for being a go-to distribution point for autonomous vehicles rather than developing that vehicle technology itself.