Self-Driving Cars: The Future Is Now!

You know that gut-wrenching feeling you get when your computer freezes and it gives you the blue screen of death? But now imagine that instead of your computer crashing, it's your car that's crashing. And instead of the blue screen of death, it's actual death. Well, that's kind of how I've felt about the prospect of Google's self-driving cars for a long time. However, that may be a bit of an oversimplification.

After all, being on the road with cars driven by humans is always a risk of danger—just one that we are so used to that it barely register it anymore. So would self-driving cars be able to overcome some of the current dangers that exist with driving?

There are certainly a number of advantages with self-driving cars. Accidents caused by drunk driving, general human irresponsibility, and other states of impairment would not be an issue with self-driving cars. They can also detect potential hazards like pedestrians and bicyclists. However, implementing the necessary technology to expand the use of these cars beyond the Google campus at 25mph is not something that can happen overnight.

Atop the self-driving cars on the Google campus sit a spinning laser than detects the objects around it. In addition, Google has created precise digital maps of the surrounding area that allow the car to navigate the area. Google has mapped 2,000 road miles on which its cars can drive, but California alone has 170,000 miles of public road. Given the amount of roads still needing to be mapped, that 2,000 miles is just a drop in the bucket.

There are, however, uses that don't necessarily require that sort of detailed digital map. Currently, there are cars that have the capacity to park themselves in a parking garage. Passengers can exit the vehicle at a drop-off point and let the car drive around 5mph to find parking within the garage. This is not only a convenience for people in terms of saving time and preventing minor collisions in parking lots, but in terms of saving space. Without needing to allow for room on either side of the parked car for passengers to exit, self-parking cars can park much more compactly.

However, even if technologically is able to be developed quickly, there is one thing that moves at a glacial pace: changing laws. Currently, cars without steering wheels are not allowed on the road. Speed limits would also have to be changed in certain areas; the 25 mph Google cars might be extremely useful for helping an elderly person get to the grocery store or take care of basic errands, but what if there is no route with an appropriate speed limit? Likewise, self-driving cars would have the ability to drive much faster than the current speed limit on freeways. Designating these new laws may actually take quite a bit more time than mapping out all the roads of the world (which, let's not forget, Google has done before).

And of course, there's the aforementioned software reliability issue. On the other hand, the software that controls airplanes makes them significantly safer and more reliable. The likelihood of getting into a plane crash is far lower than the likelihood of getting into a car crash. Having self-driving cars that worked properly could actually make the road much safer.

One potential piece of a solution, which may be somewhat underway in a sense, is to gradually introduce the automaticity of cars over time. For example, cars could begin to implement user-programmable features such as controlling the distance between their car and the car in front of them. Similar technologies already exist in many cars, such as detecting the current speed limit of the road. Other cars can detect where the lanes on the road are. Even cruise control is a basic example of a user-programmed feature that controls the car. Implementing more features like this could help to create a balance between the automaticity of the car and the control of the user.

So until laws change, software is developed, and I stop imagining self-driving cars as an experience akin to Mr. Toad's Wild Ride (plus death), I will be cruising in my 2001 Toyota Corolla with my cassette tape player and my broken cup holder. But change is always possible. I'm looking at you, Google.