Autonomous Cars

The road is a dangerous place with countless accidents. Humans are the cause of these accidents. Drunk driving, driving while texting or on the phone, and even just human carelessness are reasons why the road is dangerous.
In our society, we need modes of transportation to get from one place to another. Our dependence on cars makes it impossible to avoid the road.
Safety is the number one concern so how do we make roads safer? Since human drivers are the problem, why not have a machine drive the car?

A machine driving our cars for us would be a revolution in transportation. Autonomous cars would reduce the number of accidents that occur. They are able to react faster than humans and are not affected by emotions.
They are not able to be distracted like humans are. With less accidents, traffic would be lessened and be much faster. A human may not even be needed to be in the car.
Autonomous cars would be able to drive to you. The road would be much safer and efficient with autonomous cars.

Google's driverless car (pictured on the left) is an example of an autonomous car. To make cars autonomous, Google attached sensors to the top, front and on the rear for the car.
These sensors "visualize" the surroundings to determine the position of the car with data from Google Street View. Artificial intelligence combines all of the data to drive the car.
As of 2010, Google's driverless car has been accident free with the automated driving system on. View the video below to see Google's driverless car in action.

A major obstacle for autonomous cars is the law. The current laws do not mention autonomous cars and would make it illegal to drive them.
Transportation laws would have to be changed to accommodate driverless vehicles. There is no doubt that autonomous cars and even autonomous vehicles is the future.
Autonomous vehicles would make transportation much safer and efficient.

Click here to learn more about Google's driverless cars!

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