Self-driving cars are not perfect, but they are the future
A 49-year-old woman was killed in Tempe, Arizona, on Sunday after being hit by a self-driving Uber. Though Uber, slammed irreverently for the mishap, has suspended its autonomous vehicles, campaigners with little knowledge about complex tech systems, want no self-driving car to ever hit the road again. The first pedestrian death by a driverless-car is scary, but let's not write off the technology forever. Here's why.
Disclaimer: Uber hasn't asked us to write this article
We have NOT been paid by anyone to write this article. At best, it is an appeal by a company which believes in technology and the wonders it is certainly capable of.
Footage of the accident
Tempe Police Vehicular Crimes Unit is actively investigating
— Tempe Police (@TempePolice) March 21, 2018
the details of this incident that occurred on March 18th. We will provide updated information regarding the investigation once it is available. pic.twitter.com/2dVP72TziQ
But, what about the millions of accidents caused by human-recklessness?
According to the World Health Organization, 1.25 million people were killed on roads worldwide in 2013. Of them, 270,000 were pedestrians. All these accidents involved vehicles driven by humans. Meanwhile, Uber's driverless-cars have driven over two million miles, Waymo's five million miles, and Tesla had claimed to have travelled north of 222 million miles in 2016. How many driverless-cars related deaths have you heard of?
Why do we need autonomous cars?
We need them to make roads safer. By cancelling unpredictable human behavior, driverless-cars will make driving less risky. However, reaching there will take a lot of time, experiments, revisions and tragic accidents. But instead of losing patience with every incident, we need to learn from them and keep at perfecting the technology so that in 10 years, we are where we want to be.
Uber CEO working towards understanding what happened
Some incredibly sad news out of Arizona. We’re thinking of the victim’s family as we work with local law enforcement to understand what happened. https://t.co/cwTCVJjEuz
— dara khosrowshahi (@dkhos) March 19, 2018
We don't need innovation, until we do
Why the risk, the hassle, you might still argue. There are other ways to contain road rage, right? We didn't need ships, airplanes, smartphones and electricity. Until we did. Do you think using them has always been this safe? It takes major accidents/tragedies to trigger crucial safety improvements. Every breakthrough technological advancement is tainted with the sweat, blood of countless people across generations.
They are work in progress. Don't shun them just yet
Complex tech systems need time to evolve/mature, sometimes a decade, other times even more. Google started testing its driverless-cars in 2009. It has been about a decade since and it will take another 10 years at least before we get to see something concrete.
