Self- Driving Cars Should Not Be fully Trusted

The advancement in technology has allowed many aspects of our life to become easier including the way we travel long distances. Long ago, we only rely on animals such as horse to reach our destination by land but they can only carry a few people and can also feel tired so they required to take a rest to be useable again which only makes for longer travel time. That was until the invention of steam engines which birthed to the creation of cars that we were able to have a way to travel long distances way faster and more convenient with the only limitation is when the driver that is driving the card gets tired.

But even that will also be gone soon too with the creation of self-driving cars which can operate with little to no human input. Equipped with multiple cameras and different sensors, they were able to detect their surroundings and transfer that data to an artificial intelligence which will navigate the car based on the data it receives. Truly a fascinating technology which we think we can only see on Sci-Fi movies but now, it has been used for quite a few years now. That said, I still have some concerns so I think I would set aside purchasing self-driving cars even if I have the opportunity and capability to do so and I will share my reasons in this article.

To start with, I'm not a fan of driving any forms of vehicles cause once you drive, your focus should only be on the road, preventing you from doing other things and for me, that was just an inefficient way of using time. It can be also very boring to drive specially when we are caught up in a traffic. That is why I rather be using public transport and use that time to check my emails or even watch some videos. So, if anything, buying a self- driving car will be more beneficial to me. However, self- driving cars requires internet connection to function such as the need of GPS for navigation, downloading maps and access for real-time traffic information but this also means that we are inevitably letting free access on our location information and compromise our privacy as well as our security. At the same time, many areas in my country has poor mobile internet reception which could delay the flow of information self- driving cars need to function properly and may even result for accidents.

^{Original Image Source: Dominika Kwiatkowska - Pexels}

On the other hand, in case that an accident by which a self- driving car is the main cause, I think that the responsibility should fall in the owner of the car because even if the car is set to drive autonomously, at the end of the day, an AI is still just a program and it can only do what it is programed to do. So there will be no way for it to react on unforeseen circumstances beyond its program which may trigger the accident and completely relying on them can be the cause of our downfall. That is why owners of self-driving car should not completely avert its attention in the road. That said, I also think that the government where the car manufacturers operate their business should be under strict regulation in order to ensure each cars that they produced are following a certain set of standards.

Thank you for reading my post and see you on the next one!

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^{All unsourced image on this post belongs to me.}