Describe Functions, Description And Future Of Driverless Cars

Jonathan Rodolfo
Professor name
ENC102
Date
Future of Driverless Cars
I. Introduction
Car innovation continues to improve every year in the car industry. More and more of these features are starting to become standard by car manufacturers, especially when dealing with car safety. The most common safety features in vehicles today are having back-up cameras, hands-free Bluetooth connectivity, blind spot awareness and automatic emergency braking before an imminent collision. In today’s modern age of technology, self-driving cars will become a hot commodity in the not so distant future and the car manufacturers will be faced with challenges like government regulation, safety aspect for consumers and marketability to the public. One must know how autonomous vehicles were conceptualized to better gain a full understanding of its risk and rewards.
History of self-driving vehicles
Brief history
The thoughts of self-driving cars came in the late 1950s. Not until 1968 the first breakthrough in driverless car technology became a reality. This particular car design used sonar and gyroscopes to drive, steer and brake an automobile. A prototype driverless car was completed and announced by Google back in 2010. The Google car uses proprietary hardware and software that are very advanced, this system utilizes cameras, radar sensors, and a laser range finder (Poczter 7). The car’s computer system also gathers information via RADAR, SONAR, and GPS, and then processes the input to determine what action the car needs to perform (Robertson 6).
Description of driverless cars
For the driverless cars, one of the important things that determine how they negotiate roads is that there is information regarding the surroundings just like in human driven cars (Robertson 72). To achieve this, the driverless cars rely on electromagnetic waves as laser beams and radio waves, which then emit sound waves making it possible to evaluate and estimate how close other objects are (73). There is continuous emission of laser beams all round, but since lasers are at times inaccurate the radio waves (RADAR) and sound waves (SONAR) supplement those that also bounce off and return to the self- driving cars (73). These vehicles are also fitted with the Global Positioning System (GPS) to determine the exact car location (Robertson 74).
Functions of self-driving cars
The self-driving cars have sensors that interpret data and help in navigation, and these vehicles can move without requiring a driver as they can sense their surroundings. Self-driving cars detect objects, track, and sense the surroundings and control the vehicles’ movement. Mapping also facilitates navigation and since the driverless cars transport people who need to move yet they cannot drive like those with mobility issues and even those impaired. However, if there is a negative perception among the public then the idea of the autonomous vehicles will only be popular among certain sections of the public. At the moment, driverless cars do not necessarily require passengers, but legislations will likely affect how the vehicles will operate in the future including determining who is responsible for violating traffic laws.
II. Risk of autonomous vehicles
Safety Issues
The integration of innovative technology for both software and hardware aspects has benefited the driverless technology market players. People would want more autonomous vehicles as they are considered safer and there are fewer accidents compared to driven cars (Schroll 817). However, there are challenges with safety as the autonomous vehicles may encounter problems on the road they are not designed to achieve. Additionally, in the case of accidents, it is less clear whether vehicle owners or car manufactures are responsible. Manufacturers are expected to make the cars safe for the roads, but when the driverless cars do not have adequate information on the soundings there is higher risk of safety concerns.
Insurance liability concerns
When the autonomous cars cause accidents, manufacturers tend to be more liable for the risks compared to ordinary vehicles where the drivers tend to be at fault, which increases the risk of insurance liabilities (Lohmann 335). There is the promise of increased safety when using the self- driving cars, and there are differences on how jurisdictions handle liability. For instance, in European countries, there is strict liability targeting the vehicle holders, while in others it is the driver who may not be the vehicle holder. The challenge is to identify who is at fault, and it is expected that most blame will shift to the manufacturers. This is especially when there are defects in the design, construction and instruction of various car components and this has been associated with insurance liability concerns (Lohmann 337).
Cybersecurity and Privacy Protection
Driverless cars increasingly rely on software solutions to improve driving, and this has created privacy and cyber security concerns (Lee 31). Third parties can hack into the car systems and steal personal information, and in some other cases they can compromise the safety and security of the vehicles that they fail to function as intended. The problem of cyber security and privacy is compounded by the slow pace of state governments adopting laws to improve the security of car systems. Even as the autonomous vehicles use laser technology and sensors to assess the car’s surroundings, hackers can paralyze ...