Lennert van Gestel
Google has been working hard on their self-driving vehicle (SDV) technology in the past six years. They are planning on creating a commercially self-driving vehicle available in 2020. It is amazing to see how this technology has developed itself. Googles goals are to make mobility easier, safer and more enjoyable. I’ll discuss my view these goals.
SDV’s will make mobility easier for certain groups of people. A lot of people are not capable to drive a car. Think of elderly, handicapped and people that are too afraid of driving themselves. With a SDV they will have possibility to go wherever they want to giving them a certain freedom they much deserve. But they are not the only road users.
It’s incredible to see how much road scenario’s the SDV already can handle and I expect this to improve even more in the future. These are, however, mostly normal road scenario’s, like switching lanes and adapting to the surrounding traffic. Every scenario has to be programmed in some way and not every scenario is a common one. It would be really annoying if a SDV wouldn’t know what to do in a situation and causes others traffic delays. Communication between drivers is crucial in some situations. How is a normal driver supposed to communicate with a programmed machine? Maybe technology solves this issue, but I have my doubts.
A classic safety argument is that people are terrible drivers. We drink, doze and text behind the wheel. In the US, 30.000 people die from automobile accidents every year. Traffic crashes are the primary cause of death worldwide for people aged 15-24, and during a crash, 40% of drivers never even hit the brakes. We’re flawed organisms, barrelling around at high speeds in vessels covered in glass, metal, distraction, and death. This is one of Google’s "moonshots" -- to remove human error from a job which, for the past hundred years, has been entirely human.
I agree with the fact that a lot of people are terrible drivers, but not all. I consider myself to be an excellent chauffeur. Google reports the following on incidents that have occurred in the last years: “As of July 2015, Google's 23 self-driving cars have been involved in 14 minor traffic accidents on public roads, but Google maintains that in all cases the vehicle itself was not at fault because the cars were either being manually driven or the driver of another vehicle was at fault. In July 2015, three Google employees suffered minor injuries when the self-driving car they were riding in was rear-ended by a car whose driver failed to brake at a traffic light. This was the first time that a self-driving car collision resulted in injuries.“
The amount of incidents seems to be small since they have driven over a million miles with a SDV. I think only time, testing and improvements in the technology will tell if a SDV is actually safer than humans driving vehicles. The SDV seems to handle normal traffic situations quite well, but a lot of accidents also happen in uncommon traffic situations.
Google’s last goal is to make mobility more enjoyable. I have only one thing to say to that. Good luck! I think it is a nice experience to be driven around by a machine for the first time, but it quickly becomes really dull. I fall asleep in every type of public transportation, so I think I’ll even sleep better in a SDV, since they are more comfortable. I really enjoy driving around. Except for the traffic jams, driving is a freeing experience for me. Turn up the music and clearing my head while driving to some nice places is something I won’t want to live without. I hope they will never force me to be driven around in that ridiculous marshmallow on wheels! (See the picture)