by Ian Tartt
Just as the car overtook the horse and buggy, so too will the self-driving car eventually overtake cars that require human drivers. Once self-driving cars become widely accepted, the ramifications will be enormous and almost entirely positive. The benefits will appeal to anyone concerned about safety, efficiency, and freedom.
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Safety
Google is perhaps the most experienced and successful in this venture due to its fleet of self-driving cars, although Tesla has several models available for civilian purchase and use. In addition to having driven themselves for over one million miles, Google’s cars have only been involved in a handful of incidents. Except for one incident in which a self-driving car struck a bus, the fault lay either with the driver of another car that hit the self-driving car or with a human operator who had temporarily taken over control of the Google car. No incidents have resulted in any fatalities, and only one resulted in any injuries, though Tesla’s record is not as pristine.
However, considering how many people are injured or killed by conventional cars compared to self-driving cars (even after acknowledging that self-driving cars are less common), the safety of the self-driving car has been proven time after time to exceed the safety of human drivers. In addition to preventing regular fender benders, self-driving cars also have the potential to greatly limit the harm done by new drivers and drivers who are under the influence, distracted, tired, or angry, in addition to reducing damage done by careless pedestrians or animals wandering onto the roads. This could help lower car insurance rates, which could make car ownership less expensive, or, if the self-driving cars cost more due to the additional technology, the lower insurance rates could bring the costs of owning a self-driving car down to those of a conventional car.
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Lower Healthcare Costs
The reduced risk of wrecks has more benefits than just reducing car insurance rates. Fewer injuries would mean more space at hospitals, allowing patients to receive better treatment and shorter wait times due to fewer shortages of staff, equipment, and medicine. This would also decrease the costs of health insurance and healthcare overall. Further, the heartache of losing friends and family would be diminished as the risk of dying in car crashes dropped; this would also mean fewer emergency services would be necessary, making the roads less congested.
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Smaller Role for Police
Because distracted driving and car crashes would be almost nonexistent, what need would there be for police, highway patrol, or state troopers to constantly monitor the roads? The cars could be programmed to never exceed a certain maximum speed without first being reprogrammed, making speeding tickets a thing of the past. Likewise, tickets for running red lights or stop signs could similarly vanish. This would give the police more time to focus on stopping violent criminals, potentially leading to a much safer society. And because the chances of a wreck would be greatly diminished, there would be fewer driving-related lawsuits, allowing the courts to run more smoothly and for less money.
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Smoother Traffic Flow
The onboard computers could react faster and with greater control than human drivers, allowing self-driving cars to travel both faster and closer together than current cars can. This could be further enhanced by the computers possibly being able to communicate with each other at some point, making the roads much safer. Lower chances of crashing would mean that congestion would be eased, more people would arrive at their destinations on time or even early, reckless driving would be reduced, goods could be transported more quickly, and overall road travel would be safer and more efficient. And current self-driving cars retain the ability to be driven normally simply by the person in the driver’s seat taking the wheel and tapping the brake. The car will then be under their control once more. This is important in the event that the self-driving feature is disabled and the car must be driven manually; this is why driving will remain a useful skill as long as cars continue to be used for transportation, as well as why this feature will likely always be available.
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Morally Right
With all that in mind, the best way for everyone to enjoy the benefits of self-driving cars as soon as possible is for the government to stay out of the matter, which would allow self-driving cars to be mass-produced and sold much more quickly and at much lower prices than if there were tons of regulations involved. In fact, with all the injuries, fatalities, property damage, and lost time and money that could be prevented by shifting to self-driving cars, it would be immoral for the government to delay the transition. Every minute bureaucrats and red tape delay the widespread adoption of self-driving cars is another minute in which people are needlessly dying and being injured. The benefits of self-driving cars in small-scale tests have been proven repeatedly, so if the government wants a truly effective way to reduce the hazards and costs of driving, which every rational person does, it should get out of the way so the future can arrive.