What will 2020 bring?

What will 2020 bring?

2020 is the year they say that autonomous cars will be available on the market. This will not mean a “Back to the Future” type of norm with passengers in the back seat while the car takes you where you please. That may not be for another 10 to 20 years. "The car--no matter how automated--is not yet ready to be more than a co-pilot," said National Highway Traffic Safety Administrator David Strickland.

Even though complete autonomy is far off this is not something that people are just talking about; people are taking action and developing. Currently Nevada, Florida and California have passed laws allowing self-driving cars on their roads for testing with certain safeguards. The biggest challenge to face is to entice drivers to take on this new technology. There is much fear and concern.  I think the only way the world will have truly autonomous car 100% will be if everyone person is driving one. A human driver creates too many variables to have driving next to a computer systematic car. Some variables cannot be accounted for in a program. After reading an article Google’s plan for Autonomous Cars Doesn’t Go Far Enough on Wired by Terry Bennett, it supported my theory and gave me more information that I did not even think of.

He states “We need to think about what’s outside, too- a smart, interconnect infrastructure for our roadways.” Bennett sparks my mind to the many possibilities of what is to come. The possibilities are actually endless.  Embedding automated intelligence to the infrastructure is what Bennett says is missing from the plan of the autonomous car leaders. “We need to design a system where cars can talk to the road, other cars, or a transportation center.” The cars can become an interactive system to not only one another, but to the road, to the weather, to everything.

There is an app called StreetBump which you download onto your phone and when you start driving you press “Record a Trip”. As you are driving the app records if you hit any potholes in the road, or any large bumps. The app will collect the location of where you hit your pothole. If the app records that three or more bumps occur at the same location the people responsible for the road will access the location and repair the “bump” if needed. This is one device that is already integrating car to the road, there are endless opportunities to improve the car-outside interface.

 I believe the most interesting part of it all will be how the economy will change if this ever does take place. The first question I would have is what if there is an accident, inevitable I think but technically there are not supposed to be any. So the cop comes over to the scene and the autonomous car and asks the “driver” what happened. Most likely the driver will not have any idea because he was not driving. So the question is who is at fault? How will there be any consequences for driving when there is nobody to take the blame or responsibility. What if it was a simple malfunction of the car and the system? Will this lead to a different type of insurance policies that the manufacturers take the blame. If you are putting your life in the hands of a computer they should insure that your safety is their systems number one priority.

Sources:

http://streetbump.org/abouthttp://www.wired.com/opinion/2013/09/we-need-to-think-about-the-infrastructure-for-autonomous-cars-too/