Two Very Different Approaches To Self-Driving Cars Are Being Advocated. Only One Among Them Is Right.
There is a growing consensus among car manufacturers that self-driving cars are an inevitability that they must accept. All major car makers now have started to develop the AI necessary to make this happen and a lot of them are already including some manner of driver assist features.
There does seem to be a disconnect between different companies as to the path that leads to self-driving cars. A lot of the car makers like Audi, BMW and others seem to think that some sort of combination of driver aids and driver input is the best way forward.
They say that the technology is just not mature enough to take away control from the driver altogether. The self-driving cars that they have in mind for the foreseeable future are Level 2 and Level 3 cars that are designed to function with humans at the driving seat.
Google, Uber and most notably Ford though are of the opinion that Level 4 cars, where human beings do not have to take control of the car at any time (even emergencies) are the only way to go forward. Google based its findings on real-world testing where it mandated test drivers to pay close attention to the road while the car was driving itself so that they could intervene in the case of an emergency.
What they found was that the driver would pay attention for the few minutes until they started to trust the system and then started to break protocol. It was something that was repeated again and again and Google realized that people would push self-driving aids unaware of the danger they were putting themselves and others in.
The tragic accident in which a Tesla customer was misusing the Autopilot system, as well as countless other videos of people doing the same proves that Google was correct in its assumption.
Now, technology companies wanting to take the human element out of cars is understandable but up until now, car companies have been reluctant to advocate the same. They are aware that once they start being relegated to interchangeable hardware manufacturers, they are putting their very livelihood at risk.
This is why Ford breaking ranks with the other car companies was a very big deal. Now every car maker knows that they have no option but to enter the technology race otherwise they will be obsolete in no time.
A part of the reason why car makers want humans to be ultimately responsible for their cars is because of prickly questions about accountability. Who is deemed responsible for a fatality or damages when a self-driving car gets in an accident?
It is inevitable that self-driving cars will get in accidents even though the number of such incidents should be a fraction of those that occur due to human error. Volvo is the only company that has said publicly that it is ready to take responsibility of its cars but other companies may not be so keen to open themselves to litigation.
Conclusion
Our opinion is that car companies cannot go halfway into self-driving. Having human drivers be responsible for using the software ‘correctly’ is a slippery slope to go down on and could derail the entire process.
The future of cars is eventually one where humans ride in them, not control them.
