Autonomous cars

Hello everybody!

I was reading an article the other day in the online edition of The Economist and it talks about autonomous cars.

I thought you might be interested because we all might drive autonomous cars in the near future.

Cars have already changed the way we live. They are likely to do so again. For decades, humans have dreamed of driverless vehicles.

Meanwhile, a variety of driver assistance technologies are appearing on new cars, which will not only take a lot of the stress out of driving in traffic but also prevent many accidents. More and more new cars can reverse-park, read traffic signs, maintain a safe distance in steady traffic and brake automatically to avoid crashes.

It also says that self-driving cars are no longer a futuristic idea. Companies like Mercedes, Google and Tesla are working on concepts allowing cars to cruise along on the highway without driver intervention. They also promising technology that detects pedestrians and cyclists.

The idea about automated cars is that they would eliminate human error that means no accidents from drunkenness and sleepness. Computers brake faster than humans. And computers can sense when cars ahead of them are breaking.

The biggest benefits of self-driving cars are that they will help to make roads safer and people’s live easier.

What interested me most was that it will be possible for all of us to buy a car which can drive without human activity in the near future.

On the one hand there are a lot of advantages for autonomous cars, but on the other hand there are still many disadvantages, for example: many taxi and lorry drivers will be unemployed. In my opinion, this would be catastrophic for the economy.

What do you think about autonomous cars?

Regards

Jakob