Are Self-Driving Cars Driving Their Own Problems?

Are you tired of traffic jams?
 
Do slow drivers drive you mad?
 
Do rash drivers make you feel unsafe to be on the road?
 
Don’t you secretly wish the roads were empty or just a few drivers with the sense to indicate well before they took turns, maintain lane discipline and stop HONKING SO MUCH?! #keepcalm
 
While humans haven’t been able to achieve this, maybe robots and self-driving cars could. In a situation where robots can drive, we probably wouldn’t even need traffic signals as the cars would rely on pings from each other to decide the flow of traffic. The truth is some people will be unwilling to let robots and self-driving cars take over show.
 
Maybe a mix of human and robot drivers could be the ideal scenario, at least, according to Ali Hajbabaie, a civil engineer at North Carolina State University.
 
Hajbabaie imagines a scenario where humans and machines get along. This is based on a single change of traffic lights – where there is no red, yellow or green but instead just white, which means "Robots, go! Humans, follow!"
 
 
However, much like humans, self-driving cars aren’t exactly functioning error-free either.
 
A few GM-owned Cruise Robot Cars faced outages leading to traffic at an intersection in San Francisco. Another time, the cars lost connection to the company server, leading to them standing still and trapping human drivers inside. (read here)
 
A rather eerie incident included numerous Waymo cars wandering into a dead-end street every 5 minutes, just to take U-turns!
 
Tesla is no exception as an Autopilot car crashed into a parked police car recently, leading to US safety regulators pressurizing the company to recall 363,000 vehicles that don’t always follow speed limits and can “misbehave around intersections”. (read here)
 
Fully self-driving cars maybe years away, as the technology has started losing steam. Waymo’s valuation dropped from $200 billion to $30 billion!
 
Gregory Shill, a law professor at the University of Iowa who specializes in transportation comments, "I would love a self-driving car, even for double the price of my car. But the tech is just not there. These things don't exist, and you can't even persuade investors that they're going to exist soon."
 
 
Although Ali Hajbabaie believes that the problem isn’t self-driving cars but the roads designed for human drivers. He says reworked traffic infrastructure could solve the problem, adding that "The end goal is to bring connected self-driving-car technology into traffic-control systems, to make intersections safer and more environmentally friendly."
 
Do you think fully self-driving cars would be completely safe? Would you consider buying one? Let us know in the comments below!