Kyle Wolter Professor Phillips COM 1103 26 October 2016 Is Google’s Self-Driving Ready for the Real World? Indeed, the automotive industry continues to develop newer and more advanced technology each and every day, but Google has taken it a step further. In fact, Google has created a self-driving car designed to navigate through city streets. According to Google, the cars have sensors designed to detect objects in all directions. The sensors can detect pedestrians, cyclists, vehicles, and animals of all sizes. In other words, it can detect anything within a two-hundred-yard radius. The software processes all the information in order to help the car safely navigate the road without getting tired or distracted. However, there are questions …show more content…
Google claims that this car would reduce traffic and speed up the process, but here it clearly shows that this car would just slow everything down due to its high sensitivity. It is not just a Google issue. Researchers in the field of autonomous vehicles say that one of the biggest challenges facing automated cars is making them fit into a world in which humans do not behave by the book. “The real problem is that the car is too safe,” said Donald Norman, director of the Design Lab at the University of California, San Diego, who studies autonomous vehicles (Richtel). Some researchers predict that traffic wrecks and deaths could very well plummet in a world without any drivers. However, the permanent use of self-driving cars is still many years away, and testers are still trying to figure out a few hypothetical risks. Hackers and real world challenges are two examples of potential risks. Researchers struggle with coming up with solutions like what to do when an autonomous car breaks down on the highway. For now, there is the nearer-term problem of blending robots and humans. Already, cars from a handful of automakers have technology that can warn or even take complete control over the driver, whether through advanced cruise control or brakes that apply themselves. Uber is working on the self-driving car technology, and Google expanded its tests in July to Austin, Texas (Richtel). Researchers have good ideas, but it still is not safe enough to be put on the …show more content…
In fact, unemployment is a popular topic and many people seem to be against the autonomous car for that reason alone. There is a significant number of people in the United States who make a living driving (cabs, truck drivers, delivery men). With Google’s self-driving car, there will be a lot of people in the world who will lose their job. Unemployment causes a lot of problems within an economy. The government and the nation suffer. In many countries the government has to pay the unemployed some benefits. The greater the number of the unemployed, the more money the government has to shell out. Therefore, a nation not only has to deal with the lost income and decreased production, but also with additional cost (Lee). Sure, Google’s self-driving is on the verge of an evolution. Google has created a self-driving car with sensors designed to detect objects in all directions. Keep in mind, the car has software that will potentially processes all the information in order to help the car safely navigate the road without getting tired or distracted. There are a few reasons why this project could be one of the biggest inventions of the