Page 108 - Grasp English B1+ (Workbook)

11 Robotics

With the incredible number of road deaths each year on the increase, it’s not surprising that governments are
looking for ways to make our roads safer. One option is to manufacture self-driving vehicles, which many believe
will help to reduce the number of accidents on our roads. Data from the US and UK suggests that 57% of car
crashes are caused by the driver of the vehicle, so you can understand why many people would be willing to
remove the danger and try an autonomous vehicle. In a survey in the US, 58% of people asked said they would
try a driverless car; whilst in India, the figure was 85%. But do self-driving vehicles offer nothing but advantages?
Let’s take a closer look.

On the one hand, many people argue that driverless cars would provide the opportunity for more people to
travel alone by car, such as the elderly or young children. However, although autonomous vehicles require little
human input, the person in the vehicle would still need to be able to operate the on-board computer. There
are also questions about what the inside of a driverless car may look like and whether a human driver would
be able to take control if necessary. In 2014, Google produced a fully automated prototype without a steering
wheel or pedals.

Furthermore, though it’s true that self-driving vehicles are likely to save time and money in the long run, the
current cost of the necessary software and sensors is incredibly high. Additionally, we’ll only really see the
benefits if the majority of people start to use autonomous cars.

Consider as well that an autonomous vehicle needs to be in communication with other devices on the road,
such as traffic lights. However, if the traffic lights fail because of a power cut, and a police officer is brought in to
direct traffic, an autonomous vehicle wouldn’t be able to interpret his signals.

Which also leads us to the question of who is responsible if an accident does occur. Although driverless vehicles
will no doubt reduce the number of crashes on the roads, there have already been cases where accidents
have occurred. For example, in 2017, a self-driving bus with passengers on-board was involved in a crash,
despite being stationary at the time. A truck reversed into it, and the bus simply wasn’t programmed to deal with
the situation. If there had been a driver on the bus, he could have blown the horn or flashed his lights to warn
the truck driver – the bus itself couldn’t.

Whilst we have focused more on people’s concerns regarding self-driving vehicles, there are a great deal of
advantages to autonomous vehicles and as technology develops to solve a number of the problems related
to this new mode of transportation, a driverless future might be closer than we think.

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