Google is focusing on carrying its work Google driverless cars on which the Chauffeur. Engineer Sabastian Thrun now responsible for this huge project, he is also joint inventor of Google Street view, is expected in the near future, our traditional way from departure to destination will be turned upside down, instead, is a new mode of transport.
Technology developers typically tinted eyes to see the world, as a group of dreamers, that is their job, but for the public, they need through the fog the truth and turn your dreams into reality. The self-driving car what is the real situation? When this disruptive technology in real-world applications, and meet the ethical, legal, and logic challenges?
Reduce traffic accidents
For an emerging technology, driverless car has many advantages, such as safe and effective, it is clear that Google is willing to take these advantages told the media. According to statistics, motor vehicle accident, the 81% are caused by human error, only in the United States a year die in traffic accidents reached 33,000 the number of accidents caused direct losses of more than $ 100 billion. Having a self-driving car, installed a computer is like behind the wheel, also means that the driver can reduce the human factor in the process. We always mess of things while driving interference, such as mobile phones to a text message, up hair in the rearview mirror, and quarreled with his girlfriend in the passenger seat driving, computers will not be these things distractions, all of their attention on the road, but, driverless cars and the number of vigilance?
According to reports, Google driverless fleet has been in the United States, Florida, Nevada, Michigan, California, conducted a trial run, driving more than 1 million miles, about the same as an ordinary United States adults 75 years of driving distance. So far, actually, only a few States allow these driverless cars on the road. In all forms of accident-free time, driverless cars met 200,000 pieces of stop signs, traffic lights at the 600,000, as well as 180 million other types of cars.
Of course, Google co-founder Sergey Brin acknowledged he driverless cars there have been 12 cases of traffic accidents, but he soon revealed to the media, all of these accidents are caused by other vehicles, driverless cars does not have any responsibility for, and fully capable of taking over human drivers to drive.
Driverless cars brought their own sexual freedom, also lets the driver get an unprecedented relaxation, even on the highway, they read a book get, for the next meeting of the spreadsheet, or start a conference call, so people can be more effective use of travel time, maybe it can greatly enhance the productivity of staff.
The future, when people no longer drive and intelligent computer control, so efficiency is one of the benefits of upgrading. According to the report issued by the Texas Transportation Institute showed that Americans each year in wasted hours in jams up to 38 hours and wasted more than 1.9 billion gallons of gasoline! In consequence, United States during this period, the annual economic losses caused by as much as $ 124 billion, according to the report, if there is no effective way to solve the congestion problem will become more serious, by 2030, economic losses caused by road congestion will be more than 184 billion dollars!
Actually, computer driver of function actually very powerful, they not only can and other no driving car for communication, to avoid occurred collision, while also can and deployment in road on both sides of sensor for interactive, to judge out most fast route; also, no driving car also can full track driving speed, and other vehicles keep best car from, and through effective planning, no driving car also can as reduced in highway Shang of parking times (after all price not cheap AH). Of course, driverless cars also have a benefit that is not under the wheel you can enjoy the surrounding landscape, are certainly not the way rage erupted.
Next, we come to talk about environmental protection and energy saving this thing
The Earth's natural resources, such as oil and gas, is very limited, it is of interest to all mankind the most problems. Starting from 2013, expects only 1.64 billion barrels of oil reserves on Earth, and to 7.02 trillion cubic meters of natural gas reserves, and did not seem to care about, still in the excessive consumption of energy, human use volume reached 90 million barrels of oil per day, the rest of the resources is expected to last only 50 years. Driverless car might be able to help ease the energy crisis, driverless cars on the road or use hybrid technology, or using electric drive systems, can greatly reduce the need for petrochemical fuels and help us protect the environment for future generations. Driverless cars more easily accepted by the society.
Sergey Brin's eyes, self-driving car revolution has a certain social acceptance of advantages, he said, the "self-driving cars could change the lives of many people, many in the current transport system cannot be people driving by car, such as the blind, teenagers, elderly people and mothers no longer have to worry about your drinking and driving. "Not only that, but there is some strong evidence, self-driving cars could soon hit the road. First of all, Google, announced they will launch to the public in 2020 there is no steering wheel and pedal prototype of a self-driving car, followed by the United Kingdom seems to be in order to regain competitiveness in the world, United Kingdom, walking in front of a self-driving car industry, the country's Chancellor of the Exchequer has announced plans in this year's budget, for driverless cars to invest 100 million pounds.
Positive energy finished, here to talk about the negative energy
We recognize the drone technology, must also admit that the technology is a double-edged sword.
First of all, let us see driverless car safety concept. But for the concept of automatic driving, it has its own inherent problems. Indeed, Google's driverless car has done a lot of test runs, mileage, even relative to adults with 75 years of driving experience, but all the test run is in the limited conditions and circumstances. As we all know, inclement weather conditions may be breaking the roof sensor, but even more frightening is that these driverless cars there is not recognized by snow-covered roads, and once without a digital traffic signals, driverless cars could not identify the traffic police and road traffic signal from workers.
Other safety factors need to be considered, is the so-called "blue screen of death". If disconnected (this really happened, I remember Vancouver "Skytrain (Skytrain)" run because of software problems that are causing interrupts? ), Then what happens to the car in the drive terrible things? Similarly, a system failure, resulting in a self-driving car at a speed of 45 kilometers per hour hit another car, causing harm could be bigger? Because the people sitting on a self-driving car maybe playing a game of cards, they are not beware of meeting accident. Despite repeated promises from Google self-driving car security, but no one will say the self-driving car can absolutely avoid traffic accidents.
Accountability of the accident who is responsible?
When it comes to traffic accidents, there is a natural inevitable, that is accountability. Who was responsible for self-driving car accident? Was the owner do? Car manufacturer? Is a software developer, please? Is a cloud service provider, please? GPS is a network service provider? In this series of problems, there is no precedent for reference, but Google may not have considered these questions.
And then we'll see a moral issue, if vehicles and pedestrians/cyclists who, or and other vehicle accidents, computer-how to determine if the save? If a pregnant woman fell on the icy roads, approaching the self-driving car will pass judgment, avoid hitting the woman and her unborn child, and hit the pole and let owners killed it myself? Presumably these issues never discussed it.
"Robot police officer, why stop? "" Too many processor operations, optimize boot partition, too many modular and functional differentiation, sync too many GPS data, in addition to sending and receiving text messages while driving. "
Hacker problems
When it comes to technology, data are required on the topic. In order to better drive, self-driving cars are sure to get you a lot of information, and this information is very vulnerable to a hacker gets. They'll know where is your destination, how long will it take you to get there, whether you stay in their own home, and so on. These hackers can even remotely control your automatic driving vehicle, already can be done automatically in a car driving car suddenly stopped. Information security experts have openly admitted that hackers access to a lot of important information and experts can do the best, and only after the hacking, and minimize the damage as much as possible, they can stop hackers. Share your location information is likely to be or become a feature in unmanned systems, or the automaker's revenue sources.
The unemployment problem
In fact, the driverless cars played a subversive role, it could lead to widespread unemployment in some sectors even offline. Uber said driverless cars to use instead of a taxi before, but the current model, they cannot replace the driver, just take a taxi company that the middleman. However, Google's self-driving cars once used in the taxi industry, is likely to affect the taxi driver career.
In addition, most likely to lose their jobs, might be those that travel in interstate freight truck driver, once the automated driving technology has been recognized, shipping companies will first, resulting in 3.5 million professional truck drivers laid off across the United States. This is a huge unemployment, especially, in recession now, unemployment is hard to quickly find alternative work.
Fun to drive
Self-driving cars may affect your driving pleasure, it makes people gradually lose the ability to control the car, after all, a lot of people like to experience road-trip, who likes to drive a shuttle in the city, and the self-driving car will not bring any exciting. OtterBox iPhone 6 Case
In addition, the driverless cars will also have an impact on the human body. When people do not drive yourself, but can cause motion sickness. This is in the process of moving the human body, derived from the perception of the inner ear and eye out. If your inner ear to figure out you are moving, your eyes are watching movies or reading instead of moving with the car and watch the outside world movement, then it can lead to the disease.
Above these, are likely to slow the speed of self-driving cars, but when it become the norm in the next 30 years. Today, however, we must also pay attention to the problems mentioned. More than ever, we need wisdom, especially in the field of driverless cars. Since there is already speculation that, by 2030, driverless cars will have a total market value of $ 87 billion!
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266 votes
Google car
Google developing driverless technology for 6 years, despite public concerns, but the company continues to increase development efforts, and strive to make driverless car practical and firmly believe that driverless cars will be successful within 5 years "the road." Google's self-driving car project manager Chris Urmson said that by 2020, the driverless cars will not only popularity, will also be a "standard".
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