Opinion: Self Driving Cars and the Transportation of the Future

By: MithrandielWell, it's official: the future is here. The internet is abuzz with the "Back to the Future 2" themed setting that we're all supposed to be living in starting today. When I think about it, it's amazing to see what visions of the future looked like not just 25 years ago, but even 100 years ago. People imagined a sleek, streamlined civilization where mankind lived among the clouds and enjoyed untold advances in science and medicine. What often stuck out to me the most in these depictions, however, was the aspect of personal travel. Flying cars, hoverboards, teleportation...the expectations often far exceeded our current level of technology. Yet, we are seeing some drastic leaps forward in a specific field of personal travel/transportation, and that is in the field of self-driving cars.We've seen iterations of this in a Sci-fi movies and novels: a man gets into his car, tells it the address of where he'd like to go, and then continues with his work while the vehicle uses GPS and its own system of artificial intelligence (AI) to take the traveler to his destination. Google was one of the early pioneers, as they would utilize this technology in their "Google cars" that were used to chart the vast and impressive street view feature in Google maps. Since then, numerous top-end car manufacturers including Tesla and Mercedes-Benz have been working on their own autonomous driving systems. Tesla just recently rolled theirs out in the form of a software update, and the result has been both exciting and scary for their current drivers.Certainly, self-driving cars could have a significant impact on our society as a whole for a number of reasons. First, computer systems are far less likely to make risky maneuvers on the road, making driving safer for everyone. Right now, there are more than 3,200 deaths per day on the road, or just over 1.3 million people who lose their lives while driving. An additional 20 million+ are injured or disabled. By integrating self driving cars into society, we could see a drastic reduction in these numbers, as human error would be removed as a potential contributing factor. Logistically, traffic would also be positively impacted. With less chance for accidents, and better choices being made on the road by AI systems, traffic would be more streamlined. This could have far reaching implications for professionals and commuters everywhere.Second, this software could bring mobility to a large population of people who can no longer drive due to age or disability. This is probably the most exciting aspect of the technology for me. We have a sizable population of people who have very little mobility, and a self-driving car could re-integrate them into society. They could go to the store on their own, go to the movies, participate in society and the economy at large.Finally, self driving cars would represent a tectonic shift for the insurance industry, as they already offer steep discounts for drivers who agree to having a tracker in their vehicle that electronically records their driving habits/behaviors. Owning a self-driving car could effectively eliminate the days of waiting for a "good driver" discount, as well as remove a lot of the complication and nuance involved in determining who was "at-fault" in any given accident.Of course, there are downsides of this advancement as well. I'm sure we all know a handful of people who really enjoy working on cars and driving cars. We're already seeing a shift in the production of cars that is making self-repair more and more difficult. If the future of driving is one where a computer does all of the work, and driving your car "manually" may potentially expose you to more legal liability, what will happen to the car lovers and hobbyists? If this self-driving technology eventually makes its way to public transportation, that could drastically impact a large employment sector. Finally, there's the sobering scenario of how AI would determine its actions in an event to minimize loss of life. There are many obstacles that have hindered the development of this technology, and for good reason. However, if we are able to solve these issues, we could unlock a technology that could drastically improve the lives of countless millions of people around the world.Even though we haven't taken to the skies in our personal vehicles, or mastered teleportation or any of the other fantastical visions of the future that have been conjured up in decades past, I often catch a brief glimpse of what this world looks like. Self-driving cars, ever advancing artificial intelligence systems, breakthroughs in science and medicine on a weekly basis. This might not be the futuristic utopia people imagined, but you won't find me complaining.