An opinion on losing control
On Feb. 14 2016, one of Google’s self-driving cars was involved in a collision with a bus while trying to merge lanes on El Camino Ave. in Mountain View California. The computer system on Google’s car predicted that the bus coming up behind it would yield to its merge. This was not the case, and a low speed crash occurred. No one was injured.
Google’s self-driving cars have been involved in accidents before, but all of them were deemed to be caused by human error. This is the first accident that Google has accepted that the computer program that their autonomous cars use may have been at fault. The DMV is still investigating.
As Google’s car decided to merge lanes, it made a fundamentally human error. The argument here is that these mishaps cannot be avoided unless every single car on the road was self-driving. Self-driving cars are a hotly debated topic worldwide and many people fear losing their control to a computer. I am terrified of not being in control. It’s why I am scared of flying, even though you are more likely to crash a car than crash a plane, at least in a car I have some sort of control over what happens.
It is profoundly humanistic to be afraid of losing control. In life we cannot control the things that are constantly changing in our world and that scares us. Throughout my life I have noticed how quickly technology is developing. It is nerve-racking that eventually, we will have to put our trust in technology to keep up.
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In order to put our trust in these new apparatuses, we will have to accept that we will not be in control of every movement and decision. For many, this concept will cause them anxiety. But it is my belief that the direction our society is headed in cannot be discouraged. The earth we live on is speeding toward the future, and in due course self-driving cars will be a part of our lives. I think that if we all successfully travelled in self-driving cars, the crash rates would decrease significantly and many people would be much more willing to give up their control in that situation.
If it is possible for these computers to make mistakes, there is still a long way to go self-driving cars take over our streets. However, these miscalculations are necessary for Google and other companies to perfect the programs running their self-driving cars. Once this happens, humankind will have to accept a world of probabilities and not guarantees.