Essay Sample on Driverless Cars: The Future of Shared Transportation

Introduction

Through technology advancement, the vehicle industry has achieved a milestone that brings driverless vehicles on our roads. A ride-hailing app controls the cars. The self-drive cars have no human driver behind the steering wheel. Apart from being driverless, the cars also have no specific owners and operate on a shared transportation system like the taxis.

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The driverless cars are meant to serve the whole society because they will be accessed as opposed to buying them. The cars will drive themselves to where they are needed and plan their upkeep checks. This paper provides a discussion of the road-related problems that driverless cars intend to solve.

Problems and Solutions

In the present day, people with personal cars only spend approximately 5% of their time in vehicles. As a result, a significant proportion of land is wasted on parking vehicles. Many private cars also create a lot of traffic congestion, thus calling for the creation of more roads. However, with the adoption of driverless cars, people will not need to buy personal cars. Therefore, the land used for parking and expansion of roads could be allocated for another purpose.

Buying and maintaining personal cars is quite expensive, especially when there is a need to employ a driver. Hiring personnel to run the car business only brings in additional costs since the driver needs to be paid. These costs, however, can be reduced with the introduction of driverless vehicles. An app remotely controls the vehicles, and therefore they are cheaper and offer cheaper transport services as opposed to owning a car (Kirkman 1).

The presently used fuel vehicles are prone to gas emissions, road accidents, and traffic congestions. According to (Union of Concerned Scientists 2), "Self-driving vehicles may make driving more convenient for some Americans and increase the number of miles people travel-consequently increasing vehicle-related pollution." To reduce the level of transport-related pollution, the makers of driverless cars need to pair this technology with low carbon engines. The self-driving technology could be used in hybrid and electric vehicles to ensure minimal carbon emissions to the environment (Union of Concerned Scientists 2). Additionally, governments could develop policies that discourage driverless cars from operating without occupants.

With an increase in population in major world cities, transport has not been an easy sector to crack. Vehicles have become too many on the roads as individual car ownership has also increased. As a result, most of the streets in the cities are characterized by constant traffic congestions.

Driverless cars can minimize traffic congestions through the closer spacing between cars, smart routing, and dynamic congestion- charging (Union of Concerned Scientists 2). The introduction of driverless cars in mass transit will improve the services, provide travel alternatives as well as reduce mobility costs. Integrating driverless vehicles with high capacity transit systems will create efficiency and effectiveness in the transportation network.

Vehicles are prone to accidents that arise as a result of over speeding and failure to observe traffic rules. Driverless vehicles are presumed to be safer compared to those vehicles with drivers since they are operated by a computer or an app (Mider 2).

However, as safe as they seem to be, humans are prone to mistakes, and while driving, they may activate some controversial auto-safety features, which may lead to accidents. According to Mider (5), "Any sentient adult can tell the difference between a benign road feature (highway overpass, overhead sign, car stopped on the shoulder) and a dangerous threat (a tractor-trailer blocking the travel lane). This is surprisingly hard for some of the world's most sophisticated machine-vision software."

In minimizing the chance of accidents, driverless cars need to undergo severe regulatory oversight and testing through programming to ensure the protection of both the passengers and people outside the vehicle. The vehicles need to ensure that the public policy relating to the safety of people is guaranteed.

Most of the public transit system is characterized by crime and security issues, including theft and careless driving. Driverless cars are developed to promote the security of users. The autonomous vehicles can record information on what occurs around and in them (Union of Concerned Scientists 3).

In a situation of a crime, security officers can ask the nearby vehicles if they witnessed any activity. Transport operatives will have a considerable amount of data about their clients. Though these vehicles have guaranteed security, there is no assurance that this robo-taxis will operate in all destinations, a factor that could bring about discrimination and segregation.

The operation of the robo-taxis could limit people's movements as they might only be accessible by the rich. As a result, vehicles used by the middle class cannot use the same roads used by the robo-taxis. In avoiding such conflicts, governments need to make decisions relating to the ban on private vehicles from certain streets and city centers (Kirkman 4). The introduction of driverless cars requires people to be given the freedom to drive their cars anywhere at any time.

Access to equitable transport has been an issue of concern for many people. In the U.S., transit systems are heavily dependent on private vehicles, therefore failing to provide equal services to all communities based on age, income, geography, disability, and race. Driverless vehicles can be introduced to expand access to transport for the disadvantaged communities. However, driverless vehicles might be used as a justification for low support for transit services. In such situations, policies should be developed that driverless vehicles provide equitable transportation for all people as opposed to justifying reduced public backing for transit services.

The continuous technology advancement in auto-industry has made vehicles become more digitally controlled and filled up with internet-connected devices. As a result, cars have become more susceptible to cybercriminals. Hackers are now hacking vehicle systems as they do to computers. Digital connected devices in a vehicle can be a path to the central communications network, making hackers gain control of the car and therefore disable the brakes or engine.

Hackers could remotely access the vehicle and keep the doors locked until they are paid a ransom. Additionally, hackers could steal financial and personal information about which cars collect about their owners. With the introduction of driverless vehicles, the degree of hacking could rise since everything is digitally connected.

The driverless cars are developed in a way they show location, driving information, and the conditions of a vehicle. According to Dawson (3), "Industry officials say carmakers are preparing to roll out connectivity packages allowing owners to interact with service providers and, for example, make purchases by credit card from the car while on the road." The connectivity packages make it easy for hackers to access people's information and could use this data to blackmail them.

In preventing these cyber-attacks, especially for driverless vehicles, the automakers need to beef up their software to make them tough to hack. In beefing up security, auto dealers need to make use of cybersecurity officers to develop plans for detection, response, and prevention of unauthorized intrusions (Dawson 4). Moreover, automakers need to reach out to professional hackers to aid in identifying potential faults in car security.

Conclusion

Self-driving vehicles have the potential to change the future of the transport system across the world. Whether the results are negative or positive will be based on how policy structures provide guidelines for the introduction of this rapidly developing technology.

Autonomous Vehicles have the power to transform the physical transit system within a short period. However, the success of driverless vehicles is a matter of politics and technology. Autonomous vehicles provide an opportunity to develop an enhanced relationship between private transport and social power.

Works Cited

Kirkman, Michael. "Self-driving Cars Offer Huge Benefits'but Have a Dark Side." The Economist, 1 Mar. 2018, www.economist.com/leaders/2018/03/01/self-driving-cars-offer-huge-benefits-but-have-a-dark-side.

Union of Concerned Scientists. "Maximizing the Benefits of Self-Driving Vehicles." Union of Concerned Scientists, 3 Feb. 2017, www.ucsusa.org/resources/maximizing-benefits-self-driving-vehicles.

Dawson, Chester. "The Dangers of the Hackable Car." WSJ, 18 Sept. 2017, www.wsj.com/articles/the-dangers-of-the-hackable-car-1505700481.

Mider, Zachary. "Tesla's Autopilot Could Save the Lives of Millions, But It Will Kill Some People First." Bloomberg, Bloomberg News, 9 Oct. 2019, www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-10-09/tesla-s-autopilot-could-save-the-lives-of-millions-but-it-will-kill-some-people-first.