The Cars of Tomorrow
Jag Dhaliwal ACA
Big4 Audit Manager / Your Big4 big sis ?? | Website: jagsjourney.blog ?? | YouTube 3K ?? | Book author: Accounting for Beginners ??
Having a driving license is soon to be a thing of the past as we head towards a future with driverless cars. These cars use laser sensor technology which can spot pedestrians and other traffic. The question is, how long will we have to wait until this new vehicle technology comes to the market? Currently Google, Apple, Uber and Tesla are in the fight to make driverless cars a reality and Samsung have recently started working on this too. Google is the most ambitious; the head of Google's self-driving car program, Chris Urmson, has a son who is 12 and Chris aims to have the cars ready by time his son is 16 so he does not require a driver's license. This makes me question the age limit for the 'driver' of the car if a license is not required. Other estimates include 2020 from Nissan, 2030 by Uber and 2023 by Telsa. Furthermore, Google is said to be at the forefront of developing autonomous vehicles, with its vehicles travelling more than 1m miles (90 years worth of driving experience) on public roads since 2012 in California. It has also been claimed that in the last two years there have been five meetings held with the UK Government and Google to discuss launching driverless cars in Britain. It is believed that the UK could take the lead in developing laws for the vehicles as "the non-regulatory approach being taken in the UK places the UK in a good position", Sarah Hunter, Google X.
It seems as though there are massive benefits of autonomous vehicles: creating more free time, improving safety, reducing emissions and easing congestion and increasing access to vehicles to everyone. Although the extent of these benefits can be questioned. There is a debate around whether the increase in drivers and therefore cars will result in an increase in emissions and congestion. It has been found that we can expect 11% more traffic in our journeys and 28% of this comes from 18-19 year olds. Although, 58% of journeys by all ages are under five miles and only 5% are over 30 miles. In addition, other factors need to be considered such as an increase in car sharing and the possibility of cars operating without passengers. It is worth mentioning that Millennials are an interesting bunch to look at when considering driverless cars as it is claimed that they do not care about sharing cars. Being a Millennial myself, I personally would like to own my own car and the idea of car sharing does not appeal to me. Although I would be more than happy to own a driverless car.
However, there are five big tests driverless cars will have to pass before they'll be accepted into society completely. The first regarding handling the first driverless death and how society deal with this. I think the first death would definitely make me skeptical of the cars unless there was solid evidence that it was not the driverless car's fault. Secondly, ethical decisions made by driverless cars in life-or-death scenarios so should the car prioritise the passenger's safety or the pedestrian's? There is also the major issue of hacking. In extreme cases this could result in kidnapping or even murder. Hacking has been a massive issue in recent years and I think the hacking of these cars is inevitable. The final tests are government regulation actually allowing driverless cars on the road and the changing of our habits. Another issue is around how insurance companies and independent repair shops may be cut out. If we are not responsible of the driving of the car we should not have to pay any insurance and the manufacturers should.
https://www.driverless-future.com/
Please share your thoughts. Would you be happy to be in a driverless car? Is there anything you agree/disagree with me on?
Senior Fraud Assurance Analyst (Data) at Monzo Bank *NOTE: I will never ask you to transfer money or approve payments. If you receive this request from anyone claiming to be me, it’s a scam. Please call your bank"
9 年Interesting view and good detail! Driverless car would be good but the security would have to be 100% secure like BlackBerry's Server's are otherwise would cause serious issues on the road. There are always risks and everything would run off the internet so many loopholes etc would need to be verified! But an interesting outlook overall.