Science

California Gov. Jerry Brown recently signed a Self-Driving car bill at Google’s headquarters. The bill is designed to help lay out safety guidelines for self-driving cars.

Google co-founder Sergey Brin talked about how autonomous cars will make our roads much safer and will allow others who would not normally be able to drive, to have a personal, safe, and reliable mode of transportation.

It all sounds like science fiction but autonomous cars already exist and the technology is getting better. We already have cars that park themselves, so why not keep going and take the technology further?  My current question is, would you ride in a car that you’re not controlling? I don’t know exactly how I feel about this but if it had been through extensive testing and had a override switch, then I guess I’m game. A few questions come to mind when I think about self-driving cars. I would imagine that if you take human error out of the equation you can increase travel speeds. Why not have speed limits of around 200mph?

Being able to have cars navigate themselves though dense fog,heavy rain or even driving at night would be a huge benefit for anyone. Perhaps we can wipe drunk driving out of the picture for good as your car can take you home safe and sound.

My major concern here with anything that becomes computerized and automatic is can it be hacked? Actually, we should be asking how will it be hacked because this technology will be vulnerable just like anything else we create and something like this could be dangerous in the wrong hands. There would have to be some digital connection to your drivers license that identifies a driver or passenger, kind of like in the movie The Fith Element, and there would have to be some way to detect whether or not drivers are using a “modded” vehicle that may allow them to exceed regulated speeds or drive irradically.

Another major concern of note here is liability. These self-driving cars will inevitability mess up at one point and damage other cars, property or people, and who will be responsible? How do you determine who was at fault? Computer “A” hit Computer “B”? Send the bill to the auto manufacturer? These are all questions we will have to answer when we move into a world with self-driving cars.

The bottom line seems to be that the potential safety advantages of having a self-driving car are what will push this technology forward. With law enforcement cracking down on texting and making phone calls while driving, this seems like an obvious direction to head. We really have nowhere to go but up here, traveling by car is a dangerous task. Perhaps we will be looking back many years from now and talking about  how crazy it was that people used to drive themselves around and how inefficient and scary that must have been.