How Safe Are Self-driving Or Autonomous Driving Cars?
Thanks to new and improved technologies coming up every day to make everything we do fast and safer, the world is rapidly changing. Over the years, we have seen self-driving vehicles come up, and even some autonomous driving cars are in their trial stage.
However, there are still concerns about the safety of these vehicles compared to human-driven ones. As we already know, human driving is already safe. However, with many accidents coming about because of human error, it might be best to eliminate these errors by automating the whole driving process to prevent such accidents.
What Is Regarded To Be Safe?
Measuring the safety level of an autonomous vehicle is not easy. But there is a possibility that self-driving cars can do better in reducing accidents that occur on our roads. Even if they reduce the accidents, how much better than the human-driven vehicles should they be before we adopt them fully?.
It can take a very long time for autonomous vehicles to achieve 100% safety standard, but with the progress made so far, most researchers believe they can improve safety on our roads. Alexander Powell states that self-driving vehicles don’t have to be 100% when it comes to safety. All they need to do is reduce the number of accidents that occur.
What Is Done To Ensure Safety?
Self-driving cars undergo years of test which involve assembling and assessing data for testing for safety. Technology has also improved how safety test runs are done using realistic simulations to mimic what happens on the road and the different conditions, thus ensuring the technology used is conversant with everything.
These tests alone show that the steps being taken with autonomous driving cars are towards making them safe for the road. With more tests and more data being taken, it won’t take long before we see self-driving cars that are at least 80%- 90% safe on our roads within the next few years.
Another good thing about autonomous driving cars is that they are programmed to move safely. This eliminates all the human errors that lead to accidents as they can be programmed to have the road rules in the system.
Unlike humans, these cars will obey the rules like following speed limits, thus reducing speeding and dangerous driving. The cars will also not get drunk or get distracted by phones when self-driving. These are but a few human errors that can be eliminated through improvements in technology to increase safety.
Even though self-driving cars reduce accidents caused by human error, which is a very big percentage, we cannot say that they don’t have their flaws. A few reported crashes have led to mistrust in the technology, but with a promise of total elimination of these cases through advancement to improve safety, people may trust autonomous driving cars in the future.
There is a possibility that autonomous technology can become safer due to the ongoing improvements in the technology and innovations driven by the competing manufacturers. This conclusion is made from the fact that accidents from self-driving cars occur rarely compared to accidents caused by human errors.
