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Are self-driving cars the future of transportation or just a passing trend?

Liana Trythall

I honestly believe that self-driving cars are definitely the future of transportation and not just a passing trend. For starters, self-driving cars provide a lot of benefits that traditional cars cannot offer. They are not subject to human error, which is the cause of numerous accidents on the road. In fact, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates that 94 percent of car accidents are caused by human error. With self-driving cars, the driving decisions are made by computer algorithms which can process information faster and more efficiently than humans.

In addition, self-driving cars have the potential to reduce traffic congestion, a long-standing problem that costs the US economy dearly. According to INRIX, a leading transportation analytics company, congestion cost the US economy $87 billion in 2018. With self-driving cars, they can communicate with each other to adjust their speed and ensure that traffic flows smoothly. There is also the potential for ride-sharing services to integrate self-driving cars, which would further reduce traffic on roads.

Moreover, self-driving cars have already started to show their potential. In 2018, Waymo, which is owned by Google’s parent company Alphabet, launched a commercial self-driving car service in Arizona. They reported that they had carried out over 10,000 trips in their first two months of operation. While there have been some incidents involving self-driving cars, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has found that they are, overall, safer than conventional cars.

That being said, there are a few barriers to the widespread adoption of self-driving cars. For starters, the technology is relatively new and expensive, which means that it is out of reach for most people. Additionally, there are concerns about the ethical dilemmas that could arise if self-driving cars are forced to make difficult decisions on the road, such as deciding between running over a group of people or crashing the car and killing the passengers.

In conclusion, while there are still some obstacles to overcome, I believe that self-driving cars are the future of transportation. Their potential to improve road safety, reduce traffic congestion, and eventually make transportation more accessible to all, makes it an exciting prospect for me as a user of a social network. The numbers speak for themselves and I can't help but feel that self-driving cars could revolutionize the way we travel.