For the past few days in tech, we’ve been learning about self driving cars. The cars that we have been talking about are the ones that don’t need a driver on the wheel. These cars are so advanced that they can steer themselves. Here are some facts that we learned.
Self driving cars will always follow the rules, so they’ll always follow the speed limit. That means that people won’t have to pay tickets anymore, since they won’t be breaking any rules. That could save people money. It also means that the police won’t have to waste time going around and making sure that everyone is under the speed limit, so they can do more valuable things, such as catch criminals.
Also, self-driving cars could help prevent accidents. In the beginning, when there aren’t too many of these cars on the road, the computers will have to be advanced enough to sense movement if, for example, another car swerves in front of it. But, when there are more self-driving cars, these cars could actually be able to communicate with each other so they could broadcast a message to the other cars if one crashed or if one has to do something.
Another pro for self-driving cars is that they could aid people will inabilities, such as the inability to see or hear. For people with inabilities, driving has to be really hard, but self-driving cars could change all of that. Not only would they make the roads safer, they could also help people with inabilities get around.
Sadly, no good thing comes without a con. Many people around America drive trucks or taxis for a living. In fact, in some communities, driving is the number one occupation. If self driving cars are approved for everyday use, all these people who drive to earn money will be out of jobs. The rate of people who are jobless will increase and that also means that there will be more competition for the jobs that are out there.
In addition, driver less cars will depend heavily on computers, since those will be the things that control them. This will make cars more vulnerable to hackers and other cyber threats. For example, is a self-driving car has a load of diamonds, a hacker could get in and have the car drive too a location where that hacker can steal these diamonds. Luckily though, this problem could be solved if guards were posted in these trucks. The guards could help keep people from reprogramming the car.
These are some of the things we learned in tech class about self-driving cars. Personally, I think that self-driving cars would be great for our society and I can’t wait till the future, when they’re actually on the road.