In the news recently you may have seen a test drive demonstration using a car with no steering wheel! A video posted by Google made the rounds on the internet and it showed passengers happily chatting away while the car drove them to their destination with no human intervention. The amount time people waste simply getting themselves to work each day could be spent in a much more productive fashion and driverless cars such as that one could be the answer.
Aside from making commute time more productive another huge potential benefit to using this technology is passenger safety. The many thousands of auto related fatalities each year could be reduced by eliminating the main cause: the driver. A self driving car cannot become intoxicated or distracted sending a text message causing an accident. This has huge implications for the insurance and healthcare industries as well. The less people involved in auto accidents means lower insurance rates and less trips to the hospital.
For those that still like to drive on their own from time to time,
Telsa motors recently introduced a new feature called autopilot that
allows the driver to take a break during a trip. Tesla autopilot is
more of a super-advanced cruise control that handles breaking and
acceleration to keep up with traffic. This allows those who still want
to drive the convenience of letting the autopilot take over only when
necessary.
Whether using a car like Google's that assumes one hundred percent of the driving or the Tesla autopilot I think the potential benefits are huge either way. Not only from a monetary perspective but literally life changing benefits as well. Just like automobiles replacing the horse and buggy a century ago I believe this is merely the next step in that evolution.
No comments:
Post a Comment