The future of driving with an automatic pilot system
Things having not been going well for autonomous automobiles recently. A Tesla Model X was involved in a crash while on autopilot. A Uber self-driving vehicle struck and killed a pedestrian walking her bicycle, Then, there was a driver whose Model S drove him right into a truck. All of this is causing an amount of serious anxiety. There are many questions, for example; How safe are they at the moment? Will they be safer than human drivers? And finally, what are various safety agencies doing about the problem?
In the U.S., it has been calculated that there were 1.18 fatalities per 100 million miles driven by all automobiles in 2016. This is a clever statistic by the Administration to try to show less than those who were killed by handguns. Google started testing autonomous automobiles in 2009 and there still needs to be greater attention given to the problems.
The problem, if it is ever to be resolved, is to test these cars in real-world conditions with mandatory ‘safety drivers’ behind the wheel at all times. But that is easier said than done.
In the early days of aviation, aircraft required the continuous attention of a pilot to fly safely. The first aircraft autopilot was developed in 1912. It permitted the aircraft to fly straight and level on a compass course without a pilot's attention, greatly reducing the pilot's workload. This was more than 100 years ago. Today, we still have a problem. Although some aircraft can fly autonomously, including the takeoff and landing, it seems that an autonomously enabled car may still crash into something.
Thus, at the moment, they are not safe, they may never be more safe than skilled drivers, and safety agencies need to do more.
If an aircraft can land in the exact center of a runway at 150 knots, and taxi to the gate on autopilot, even with both a first and a second pilot in place, what is next? Aircraft are using a basic form of artificial intelligence (A.I.). That’s next.
Aircraft in the air, travelling at 300 knots, are still monitored and controlled from the ground (A.T.C.) by highly trained humans. Therefore, for many more decades, even with A.I., automobiles will require safety drivers … just in case.
