The question that pops-up in my mind is,”Why are driver-less cars scary.” Neither are we in the fantasy world of Stephen King nor are we part of machine-ruling-the-world, yet driverless cars feel creepy to many. Is it because our mind has been in a way since our childhood that ghosts of murderers resided in cars without a driver?
Dark Experience 2018
In May of 2018, a Tesla X SUV collided with the highway barrier, resulting in the death of an Engineer at Apple. It further leads to making the demon of death come out for many. The masses reacted that machines are ethically low and at times dangerous too. Everyone came forward to discuss the pros and cons except the Tesla representatives.
Test on Dummies
Whether it is a safety test or performance test in a car, it is always performed with dummies. For small features it works, but giving fully control to machine is not fine, as it requires real people and situations. Uncertainties are watched closely, so safety concerns in driver-less cars minimize. The technology world was predicting to see this car on road by 2015 that did not happen.
The reason is that people have seen the failure of the driver-less car brings high magnitude loss for human race. We see accidents when people are driving on their own with their ethics intact. While this type of car will never slow down seeing an old man crossing the road. It cannot manage a situation not fed on it. Machine Learning has not reached to the level that it brings 100% accuracy.
Successful Driver Assist Technologies
We have been getting a great response on the Adaptive Cruise Control system. It has taken off the stress and burden from the driver. The satisfaction from this feature is almost 100%. So giving a try to the driverless car should be considered with proper education on it.
AAA believes that testing, experience, and education will aid consumer acceptance of driverless cars.
Game of Power
People are naturally authoritative and crave for power. A Driverless car means loss of control on road, the idea that does not click. Tech lovers argue that we can consider technology a means of doing things in a better way. In their opinion, technology is there to serve us. Instead of thinking that we have a loss of power, we should think of it as a servant doing work for us.
But experience tells that machine when given power more than usual always brings disaster. Maybe we all subconsciously do not trust machines, as it let us down. Over the years, even with sensors and beeps cars meet accidents. It is because drivers consider it a machine error instead of a real one. As their experience may have taught them so, or even worst they have seen someone meet an accident because of false alarm beep due to machine issues.
Going back to the driver-less cars scary story, after proper investigation, something was identified. It came out that the man was playing a video game on the phone while the car was on auto-pilot.
This proves that even when you are in an autonomous car you should remain conscious. The car is for responsibility sharing not delegation. A time will come that driver-less car with improved safety features will make it to the road.
