Globally, road crashes kill 1.3 million people a year and injure nearly 50 million more. Autonomous vehicles (AVs) have been identified as a potential solution to this issue if they can learn to identify and avoid situations leading to crashes.
Unlike human drivers, these vehicles won’t get tired, drive drunk, look at their phone, or speed. What’s more, AVs will reduce congestion and pollution, increase access to public transport, be cheaper, improve mobility for people with disabilities, and make transport fun again. Right?
When it comes to self-driving cars, the future was supposed to be now.
In 2020, you’ll be a “permanent backseat driver,” the Guardian predicted in 2015. “10 million self-driving cars will be on the road by 2020,” blared a Business Insider headline from 2016. Those declarations were accompanied by announcements from General Motors, Google’s Waymo, Toyota, and Honda that they’d be making self-driving cars by 2020. Elon Musk forecast that Tesla would do it by 2018 — and then, when that failed, by 2020.
By 2021, according to various Silicon Valley luminaries, bandwagoning politicians, and leading cab firms in recent years, self-driving cars would have long been crossing the US, started filing along Britain’s motorways, and be all set to provide robotaxis in London.
Where are all the self-driving cars at? That's what you're probably saying to yourself after many large tech and automotive companies forecasted that by next year, in 2020, fully autonomous tech would be rolled out in many automobile fleets.
The ability to see clearly through the darkness, smoke, most fog and glare from the sun or oncoming headlights provides a safety advantage in practically all driving environment.
Self-driving cars are already cruising the streets today. And while these cars will ultimately be safer and cleaner than their manual counterparts, they can’t completely avoid accidents altogether. How should the car be programmed if it encounters an unavoidable accident? Patrick Lin navigates the murky ethics of self-driving cars.
We'll show you some of the ways self-driving cars could transform our lives in the near future. They could have a huge impact on jobs, traffic, car ownership, and much more.
Technology that allows drivers to take their hands off the wheel could soon be a step closer.
Statistically, the least reliable part of the car is ... the driver. Chris Urmson heads up Google's driverless car program, one of several efforts to remove humans from the driver's seat. He talks about where his program is right now, and shares fascinating footage that shows how the car sees the road and makes autonomous decisions about what to do next.
You’ve already got adaptive cruise control and parking assist, and by 2020 you could have a completely self-driving car! This week Kiran finds out how they work, and what they might mean for the environment and society.
Driverless cars are arriving soon but are we ready to take our hands off the wheel? Charlie Pickering and Annabel Crabb join inventor Dr Jordan Nguyen, TV presenter Kate Peck, and comedian Merrick Watts on Tomorrow Tonight.
The automotive industry is one of the most important industries in Europe. This industry is responsible for 14% of total production and capital investment in the European manufacturing sector. The following rise of driverless vehicles is going to have a major impact on businesses and professionals.
.Driverless cars could make our roads safer and reduce congestion. But the algorithms driving them will also have to make life-or-death decisionsDriverless cars could make our roads safer and reduce congestion. But the algorithms driving them will also have to make life-or-death decisions.
Self-driving cars are coming. Tech giants such as Uber and Alphabet have bet on it, as have old-school car manufacturers such as Ford and General Motors. But even as Google’s sister company Waymo prepares to launch its self-driving-car service and automakers prototype vehicles with various levels of artificial intelligence, there are some who believe that the autonomous future has been oversold—that even if driverless cars are coming, it won’t be as fast, or as smooth, as we’ve been led to think.
An autonomous car is a vehicle capable of sensing its environment and operating without human involvement. A human passenger is not required to take control of the vehicle at any time, nor is a human passenger required to be present in the vehicle at all. An autonomous car can go anywhere a traditional car goes and do everything that an experienced human driver does.
Most people would agree that driverless cars are the future. With the recent leaps and bounds made in the self-driving car industry, very few people would be bold enough to dispute the fact that these cars will reduce the number of road accident fatalities. Research has shown that the number of U.S. deaths resulting from road accidents could be reduced by more than 90% by the year 2050 because of self-driving cars.