The Importance of Self-Driving

As I drove to school a couple of weeks ago I passed two different things that gave me somewhat of a revelation. As I was sitting at the intersection of eighteen, two totally wrecked cars pass on a tow truck, and in the opposite lane a Tesla driving down the road. Now I know these two things really don’t have a correlation but the night before I was on youtube watching the crash test videos of a Tesla and the self-driving experiments. So seeing two totally different outcomes got me thinking about the benefits of self-driving and how it could completely change our world.

Now I don't mean get on my soapbox but wouldn’t the world seem so futuristic and innovative if every car on the road was self-driving almost like Back To The Future. The idea that cars could communicate with each other as they drove by signaling lane changes and location is an amazing concept. This could allow minimal to no accidents to occur which would simultaneously bring the number of fatal car accidents down to a minimum. Furthermore, cars today now have human crossroad tracking which allows the car to brake if an object or human walks in front of the car automatically. While this does have some issues today in five to ten years innovation would allow this system to be near perfect and allow pedestrian accidents to fall.

The next big advantage of self-driving is human error. While driving there are always going to be accidents like people falling asleep at the wheel or drunk driving. The introduction of self-driving has allowed for lane correction technology as well as whether or no the human in the car is asleep or not. This use of technology has allowed cars to stop themselves decreasing reckless accidents that could put more lives in danger including the driver.

Overall, the use of self-driving can save many lives and should be implemented sooner than later. One day I hope that we can live in a Back to the Future-like world.