All self or autonomous driving cars will fail at some point due to a well known and potentially fatal flaw. This flaw could be responsible for the death and injury of thousands of motorists every year.
Self driving cars are being touted as the path to a much safer future for automobile transportation. In fact, Tesla and Google are pouring immense resources of time and money into being the first to offer an auto that drives itself. Unfortunately, both companies are pushing a technology well past its ability to deliver anything but a dangerous experiment, an experiment that may dazzle customers into show rooms and into buying a rolling technology that they think is safe and yet contains a hidden fatal flaw.
Every self driving car relies on immense computer power to make instant decisions about how to respond in any given situation, however, as we all know, computers and computer systems crash. When a pc crashes the result can be a loss of time or data. When your pc or phone crashes, you just turn it off and reboot. However, when the computer that runs your self driving car crashes, the result is far more serious. It is a well known fact, even after decades of development, our phones, laptops and pc’s still, on occasion crash. Entrusting thousands of lives to a technology that will fail at 70 mph is foolish.
Tesla, Google and any other car company pursuing this wasteful dream of self driving cars would be wise to invest their time and money elsewhere. Tesla would be well advised to instead, invest in better batteries for electric cars, batteries that deliver longer range yet do not catch on fire when pierced and yet are cost competitive. If they were to find a battery chemistry that delivered that kind of safety, range and affordability, that would truly deliver on the promise of a safer and cleaner future for all of us. (Image – licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic)