Self driving cars, just around the corner
Transportation and information technology are two of the most important industries spread worldwide, with whom each and every one of us has a daily interaction. We’re already used to the automotive digitalization, which includes features like adaptive cruise control, parking sensors and collision warning. This was just the beginning of the biggest shift in the transportation industry we’ve ever seen, self driving cars.
Technology has gradually changed our ways of interacting, accessing knowledge, as we are more than used to mobile communication, sensors and real time information. At the same time, systems inside a self driving car can detect driver’s sleepiness, and outside the car we have radars and cameras, for electronic surveillance. Self driving cars will be connecting the inside and the outside of the car, which are yet to change our urban surroundings.
This industry also brings innovations in ride-sharing, car-sharing, and vendors like Uber, Lyft, Zipcar, and Grabtaxi are gradually changing our relationship with cars. Uber’s $40 billion valuation leads to the idea that car sharing will reduce car ownership and replace 15 owned vehicles.
Evenmore, autonomy is the next step to take in this continuous evolution of the transportation industry. According to Business Insider, we’ll drive around 10 million self driving cars by 2020.
For now, it is well known that industry leaders like Google and Apple are putting great effort into releasing a self driving car model. They are accompanied by Tesla, Mercedes-Benz, Ford and Volvo, also laboring on autonomous vehicles, expected to be available to consumers in the next few years.
The benefits of using self driving cars
- Less accidents and traffic
One of the problems that self driving cars are solving is removing the human being from the steering wheel. Nowadays, nearly 1.3 million human beings die in road crashes everyday, as traffic crashes are the primary cause of death worldwide. Self driving cars represent the opportunity to have a dramatic decrease in accidents and traffic deaths.
- Reduced costs of transportation, less cars on the road, diminished pollution
As 95% in a car’s lifetime is spent parked, consider the automotive vehicle giving various ride throughout the day: taking you to work in the morning, then taking your kids to school and helping your friends solving their problems. It is possible to take each passenger to their destination, combining ridesharing and car sharing. This will reduce the costs of transportation, numbers of cars, diminish pollution, lessen stress and road rage. Also, help us gaining back the time lost to commuting, increasing our productivity.
As it can be expected, the daily usage of self driving cars will be a slow and long process. As the urban environment is not ready for this change, the bigger task we face is for cities to integrate them. However, I honestly believe that this transformation will bring significant changes to the way we live our lives, coming up with big accents on safety and trust.
Photo Credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/81108244@N00/3190298993/
