Over the last couple of years, there has been endless debating about the driverless car, is this new and innovative HGV Training Cost technology a step forward or a tragic accident just waiting to happen. There has been close monitoring of the of the progress being made with this driverless technology, the design of these vehicles for the public is even being assisted with by Google. However, George Osbourne announced this year in March that in the UK, there were to be testings of driverless lorries, this is why we felt that it would be useful to look at the pros and cons of the driverless vehicle being on our roads.
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Pros:
The driverless car being introduced to the UK does have its good points. The mere amount of time that commuters could save is one of the, In England, the average driver will spend two hundred and thirty-five hours just driving every year — this adds up to six working weeks. While in a driverless car, you do not have to worry about controlling it and that time can be used in a productive manner.
Being as driverless cars are preprogrammed to avoid collisions, pull over for emergency vehicles and maintain speed limits, it could also make the roads a lot safer. As a matter of fact, the prediction is that 90% of all cars driving the roads were autonomous, a number of vehicular accidents would drop from six million a year to only 1.3 million, a number of deaths would drop from 33,000 to 11,300.
It is, however, a slightly different story for lorries. In Germany trial conducted with the driverless lorry were positive stating that it was much safer than when a human drove, they never got tired and focus and concentration are never lost. Regardless of how well you are able to steer a truck, accelerate or slow down, you will never to any of it as well as the highway pilot is able to. It is predicted that self-driving lorries can make the roads a lot safer by lowering the 3000 amounts of truck accident deaths that occur on a yearly basis as well as minimising pollution and delivering faster.
Cons:
There are however some significant risks associated with not having a driver behind the wheel of a vehicle, especially a lorry. Since the launch of the driverless cars to be tested, many teething problems have ensued that are obvious by the dings and scrapes on the car. Towards the end of 2015, motorists were purposely driving into driverless cars to expose an important design flaw — they always follow the law, a human drive does not. The end result here was that human motorist who were not expecting it drove into the very cautious, driverless cars. There have been times in which a driverless car was pulled over by an officer for driving ate 24 mph in 34 mph zone causing traffic to backup.
The accident rates for driverless cars have undergone many studies that use naturalistic data, however the technology continues moving forward. That being said, this year the progress associated with the driverless car suffered a major setback. The first casualty of the upcoming driverless car was reported in May 2016. While travelling in a Tesla S model vehicle in auto pilot, Josh Brown, age forty was killed. The sensor software did not tell the difference between a white lorry and the sky, the car hurled at full speed into the lorry ending up under the lorry, the top was completely ripped off and Josh´s life ended. This fatal accident has made the entire industry question what this may entail for the future of driverless cars.
