The Dangers of Automation

Automation seems to be a popular trend today. Home automation, self-driving cars, and Amazon delivery drones are all examples of automated systems aimed at making life more convenient for us. To many automation sounds great, after all much of human innovation has been driven by our laziness and the idea of having a computer, robot, or drone do something automatically for us that would otherwise cost us time and effort seems pretty good. However automation carries with it risk, especially with complicated tasks that have many variables like driving.

Most of us have probably heard about Google’s self-driving cars, according this article they have driven about 700,000 miles which is more than most people will drive in their lifetime. The goal of these self-driving cars is to reduce car accidents and transport people who have trouble driving. There are many obstacles these cars need to overcome before we begin to see them on the road, the first is America’s deteriorating infrastructure. Most of our infrastructure was built long ago when self-driving cars were never a thought to anyone, because of this it was not optimized for them. For example a road network arranged in a grid fashion with magnets and other sensors embedded into the road way would be easy for autonomous cars to navigate. Unfortunately our road network is comprised of different size roads, traffic circles, complex intersections, and roads where pedestrians jump in front of your car when the light is green (Washington St). Add to this the laws for navigating these roads which change between states and you can imagine the difficulty of designing an algorithm around it.

I have no doubt self-driving cars will one day overcome our infrastructure problem, and I believe they will reduce the number of car accidents, but they will also introduce other problems into the system. Automated systems work best under supervision, self-driving cars are no different, but what happens when the sole passenger is an underage child with no understanding of driving regulations, or an elderly person who is not capable of taking the wheel should there be a problem. This article talks about self-driving cars reducing car accidents cause by intoxicated drivers, but having an intoxicated driver behind the wheel of a self-driving car is still a problem should the car find itself in an unmapped area and need input from the passenger in control.

I think automation is a great idea for many simple risk free tasks, but when it comes to more complicated and dangerous tasks I am more cautious. I hope self-driving cars make it into mass production one day, but we need to make sure we do no relax our driving laws in their wake. The driver (or passenger in control) of a self-driving car should still be a licensed driver, the car itself must undergo the same inspections we require today, and others to inspect the automation system. Self-driving cars should include an advanced security system that does not allow for unregistered people to drive the car or operate the automated system. If all of these systems and regulations are put in place I think self-driving cars can make our roads a safer place.