On March 18, a woman from Tempe, Arizona, became the first pedestrian to be killed by a self-driving automobile. Her death drew widespread attention to the new technology and brought into question whether autonomous vehicles should be allowed on the road. Although this new technology is an exciting insight into what transportation may look like in the future, putting these vehicles on the road before they have been tested extensively in controlled environments is overly dangerous.
The idea of driverless vehicles has been toyed with for decades, but over the past few years, many of those ideas have become a reality. Major companies including Google, Uber, and Ford have invested billions of dollars into projects involving self-driving automobiles.
Conceptually, self-driving vehicles are an incredible, innovative idea. Using the vehicles for taxi or Uber services would instantly decrease the cost of transportation by cutting out the middleman: the driver. On top of that, offsetting the cost would allow for these sort of services to become cheaper per mile than owning a car. UBS Banking Services, a Swiss multinational banking and financial service company, in a global research document predicted that by 2050, urban-car ownership will decrease by 70 percent because of the significant price differences.
In addition to their financial benefits, autonomous cars have the potential to significantly affect the environment and safety on the road in a positive manner. Because the cars are electronic, no harmful emissions would be released (by the vehicles), and by eliminating reckless or intoxicated drivers — one of the leading causes of death in the U.S. — many lives could be saved.
RELATED: UI steering future of automated driving industry
However, all of these fantastic benefits are null if the vehicle is not fully functioning.
As an Uber spokeswowman noted in an interview, the company “decided to not reapply for a California DMV permit with the understanding that our self-driving vehicles would not operate on public roads in the immediate future.” The vehicle was not functioning at high performance levels when the accident occurred.
“The cars were having trouble driving through construction zones and next to tall vehicles, like big rigs,” reported a New York Times article on the Arizona crash. “And Uber’s human drivers had to intervene far more frequently than the drivers of competing autonomous car projects.”
Knowing that the vehicles were not entirely safe for the road, Uber should have never allowed them to leave the test circuits.
Just as new drivers are required to take driver’s tests, autonomous vehicles should be also. Even if we replace brains with computers, which many perceive to be a more dependable option for future transportation, it is still crucial that we have confidence that what (or who) is behind the wheel has the ability to keep the roads safe.
“If it took autonomous [vehicles] one day more because of this to get to market, that could be 100 people’s lives that are at risk,” Lyft President John Zimmer said. “No one should take shortcuts, and no one should put out technology before it’s ready.”