Driverless cars – is it safe to take the human out of the loop?
From the beginning of the world humans always wanted to make their life easier. They produced more and more complicated tools for hunting, then for harvesting and other branches of human activity – these tools allowed them to make their job without using their bare hands. Time was passing, humanity was evolving newer technologies, people knew more and more about the world and laws that rule it. But one thing that every human-being wanted the most was faster way of travelling. The first step was inviting wheel. Later humans built carts, coaches and many other vehicles propelled with animal’s or person’s strength. But still it was too slow and too less automatic for people. The change came in 1769, when Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot presented his steam vehicle. Then everything started to evolve faster – and we step to nowadays, where we have many different types of cars, even the ones fueled by water or electricity. In our century, where artificial intelligence isn’t a Sci-Fi subject only but also reality, people started to think about using it in car’s safety and driving system’s development. One of the results is Google’s self-driving car, which is travelling in states of Nevada, Florida and California, where autonomous vehicles are already legalized. This technology is evolving all the time and maybe there will come the day where whole world will be able to use such kind of cars. But there comes the question – is it safe to take the human out of the loop?
First we need to know what exactly means that the car is self-driving car. “An autonomous car (…) is an autonomous vehicle capable of fulfilling the human transportation capabilities of a traditional car. As an autonomous vehicle, it is capable of sensing its environment and navigating on its own. A human may choose a destination, but is not required to