A woman reading a magazine as her car drives and operates for her with no hassle.
Automatic, self-driving cars were created to operate and function in a way that imitates the way a human would be driving, but without the human ever having to even lift a finger. At first glance, most people are thinking, “Wow, this is great! I can watch TV on long rides, play games on my phone, put on my makeup, fall asleep at the wheel, and have a drink without having to worry about drunk driving!” which are all accurate statements. Unbeknownst to us, self-driving cars have many dangerous features that the media hasn’t really advertised. The self-driving car periodically hands the car’s control back over to the human with zero warning. This means that the driver has to immediately stop what they’re doing in order to grab hold of the wheel as quickly as possible. Children and young teenagers can easily take the vehicle out for a spin because the car operates itself, putting them at great risk of being in danger. An even bigger concern is if the car happens to malfunction, you’re stuck behind the wheel of an out of control car. Have you ever been to traffic court? Whose at fault if you break a traffic law or have an accident while riding in one of these new vehicles?
“There are going to be times where the driver has to take over. And that turns out to be by far the most dangerous and totally understudied issue.” – Stanford University professor & director of the Revs Program
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/16/self-driving-car_n_3909069.html
Is there any concern that today’s society is relying on technology a little too much? Think about it: We rely on social media sights in order to check up on other peoples’ lives instead of face to face interaction, when the internet shuts down, we give up on the day assuming that nothing more can be accomplished until the internet is running again, without our GPS we can’t find our way around, and now we are so dependent on technology that we can’t even drive our own cars? The concern of a war of humans vs. technology has already been proposed in the past, and self-driving cars just gets us one step closer.