How safe are self driving cars in the future?

Self driving cars have had a significant impact on the global automotive market since Google produced their self driving cars. The car basically has no steering wheel, brakes, or acceleration pedal and runs autonomously through a computer navigation system. However, safety has always been the major concern.

However, automotive technology seems to be heading in that direction, with a projected 75 percent of vehicles in the US to be driverless by 2040. As early as 2000, several companies have been researching this concept including Audi, Toyota, Nissan, Bosch , BMW, Volvo and the University of Oxford, to name a few. But how safe is a driverless car? Here is how the automotive world has tackled this issue:  

Google’s experience

In August 2012, Google announced that their driverless car had made it to 300,000 miles without any accidents and had survived various traffic conditions during the trip. The car’s successful journey was attributed to its multi sensor navigational system. The system includes a roof sensor which helps gather and interpret accurate data such as distance. This data is then transferred to a central navigation network that takes care of the vehicle’s control system. The car is also equipped with rear sensors to detect and prevent collisions, and electro-optical infrared cameras with 3-D detection ability on its front. Using this system, autonomous cars use integrated techniques such as GPS and LIDAR to sense their surroundings. It also help’s locate the vehicle, interpret its movements and act accordingly to the current situation in its vicinity.  

Challenges of the technology

While Google’s driverless car has huge potential for worry-free driving it still faces several technological challenges. For example, it still cannot understand manual or hand signals such as stop. It also has difficulty detecting lane markers when it snows or when the weather is terrible. The driverless system also operates in sync with the digital map, which Google may provide, and real changes on the map (such as road repairs or projects) might hitch its navigation. If this technology pushes through, the search engine giant predicts that there will be 30,000 fewer deaths and 2 million fewer injuries by 2020.  

Applications in the Philippines

  The roads of Metro Manila may not be ready for driverless cars in the next decade given its complex nature, but it may be the solution to some of its problems. In 2013, the Department of Transportation and Communications reported that 79 percent of recorded road crash fatalities were caused by driver error.