I know how to drive, and I would love to have a future with complete self driving cars
I learned to drive(well I was forced to) 2 years ago. And while there are people who love going on long drives in their cars,and love to drive, I am not one of them. I hate driving. On top of that, I am pretty sure I am not a great driver either. In these two years of me, somehow becoming a decent driver, I realised one thing-Driving is better left to the robots! And I am pretty sure there are many more people like me who love to just sit back and look out of the window.
Self Driving Cars are the future, and if you are a driver, you will soon find yourself out of a job. I will try to convince you why robots, and not humans should be driving vehicles -
- Amount of focus needed for driving a Car
The average focus span for an adult is 20 minutes. After that need to refocus on the task. Consider your focus drifts for 5 seconds while you are driving at 60 km/hr. The amount of distance that you end up covering is = 83 metres! You really think you can drive 80m with lost focus? Well, on a highway, it isn’t gonna be an issue, but a typical Indian road looks like this -
No Doubt we have lost more people in 2016 due to road accidents in India then all our wars combined.
2. Bad User Design of Car
I really find the design of the gear system peculiar. The system makes it easier to shift gear from odd to even(shift down) ,but hard for even to odd(neutral-right- up).And if the Clutch isn’t pressed properly, the gear box turns hard. Wow. So much for Torque.This should have been solved years ago because this would have made cars extremely easy to drive for beginners,but no one cared for ages.This isn’t the case with Car designed with great thought, or with Cars which does not need them! (Yes, I am talking about Tesla).
This is from Tesla -With an electric motor, instant torque is available at any RPM. The wide torque band, particularly the torque available at low RPM, eliminates the need for gears — the Roadster has only a single speed gear reduction; one gear ratio from zero to top speed. Switch two of the phases (this can be done electronically), and the motor runs in reverse. No need for a reverse gear. Not only is this design incredibly simple, reliable, compact, and lightweight, but it allows a unique and exhilarating driving experience. The Roadster accelerates faster than most sports cars and whether driving on windy mountain roads or cruising down the highway, there’s always instant torque.
This is the Car of the future. Sexy, User friendly and In some years completely self driving.
3. Can you Spot the guy coming racing towards you? Probably not. Computer Vision Can.
You can hardly blame the User on such a road for an accident. But the point is, Computer Visiob can help since camera can generally spot and react to such instance immediately. A human at best would apply full break, and cause himself , if not others ,an injury.
4) Time is Money. Why waste it on Driving Everyday?
I see people cribbing about how exhausting it is to travel to and fro from work everyday. There are exactly two ways to solve the problem -buy a home near office or have a driver. Or the third way, though way into the future is self driving cars. You can easily sleep in your Car at the back while the car drives itself home. Insane. Amount of time spend in the car= amount of time sleeping or amount of time of reading or whatever.
5) Vehicle-to-Vehicle network with self Driving Car — A complete disruption
I need to probably right a whole article explaining this. But in simple terms it is something like this — All cars know about what path other cars are going to take. So Cars decide the most efficient path to the destination according to the position of other cars, and drives itself. If there is an anomaly- some cars changing the route, it also adjusts its root accordingly.This problem will need to solve the Byzantine Generals’ Problem- and we already have the answer, Blockchain. More on this sometime later.But I hope you got the gist.
I rest my case.
