It’s
a future we’ve all pondered about: a fleet of autonomous cars, taking us
everywhere from home, work, the grocery store to a local restaurant.
But,
one of the biggest questions on everyone’s mind when it comes to driverless
cars is ‘How safe are they?’ and if they have the potential to even save lives.
Some think that many will be rushing to Sell Cars for Cash
for the latest driver-less car on the market, whereas something that
self-driving cars have a lot of safety hurdles to get through before they
become integrated in society.
Human
Error Vs Machine Error
In
Victoria, there is a 6-year spike for on-road death tolls, and in 2017, 1225
people needlessly lost their lives in Australia. Investigations have found that
90% of these accidents involved human error in some form or another. Reasons
include getting distracted, having too much to drink, drivers looking at their
phone, speeding, reckless driving and simple miscalculation.
But
with so much tragedy caused by human error, can self-driving cars put even more
lives in danger?
Despite
our acceptance of many human-error deaths and accidents on the road, many still
feel unsafe at the notion of being in driverless car. For example, a study
found that 90% of people would no feel safe in a driverless car without a
manual override option. A study in Sydney and Perth found that 60% of people
were unsure about whether self-driving cars would make roads safer and 22%
surprisingly though that they would make the roads even more dangerous.
What
the Trials Involving Driverless Cars are Saying
On-road
trials for driverless cars in mixed traffic have seen increasingly rare
occasions where the driverless vehicle was at fault, many results suggesting
that they are in fact safer than manually-driven cars. However, a single crash
by a driverless car is much less tolerated by the public than by a car driven
by a person.
The
Future of Driverless Cars in Australia
Despite
rapid advancements in safety for driverless cars, it doesn’t seem like they’ll
be populating Australia roads in large amounts any time soon. Not only do many
people in Australia still feel apprehensive at the concept, Australia is also
behind in many ways when it comes to vehicle fleets, with a large amount not
meeting current ANCAP standards.
Road
infrastructure will also have to change to welcome in self-driving cars and
that doesn’t seem to be happening any time soon. One of the biggest factors
delaying the introduction of self-driving cars in Australia is the development
of smart-technology in cars, such as 360 degree cameras, rear cameras,
intelligent speed adaptation and ever-increasing airbag safety.
In
Conclusion
Despite
the suggestions that self-driving cars can at least become a far safer option
for transport than manually-driven cars, attitudes will have to change before
such a technology becomes the norm in Australia – something which might take a
few more years at least. But it won’t be far fetched to say that there will
come a time when car owners will be scrambling to get Free Car Removals Melbourne for their old cars, just so
they can sell their car for cash quickly and use that money to buy autonomous
vehicles.
