Self Driving Cars Essay

The introduction of self-driving cars into the road system would have many benefits to the environment. One of them being that there would be less traffic due to the fact that the cars will be able to communicate with each other and that there would be less accidents. A man by the name of Schrank et al has estimated the volume of fuel wasted in the U.S. caused by congestion since 1982. It was found out that by “Dividing their estimates by total on-highway gasoline and diesel consumption (from the Energy Information Administration) indicates that the fraction of fuel wasted on congestion rose steadily from 0.5% in 1984 to 1.8% in 2005, and is expected to reach 2.6% by 2020” (Wadud). If self-driving cars are implemented into the road system, then the percentage of fuel being wasted would decrease, helping save resources.
Since self-driving cars will be able to communicate with each other they would be able to successfully pull of platooning. Platooning is the practice of multiple vehicles following one another closely. Normal vehicles are also able to

Having a car that is fully controlled by technology will be a target for hackers. For example, as a demonstration two people by the name of Charlie Miller and Chris Valasek were able to completely stop a jeep that was on the highway by hacking its internet connection. Another example showing how large the hurdle for protecting self-driving cars is that security researches at the University of Washington were able to confuse a self-driving car just by placing a sticker on something like a stop sign, which made the vehicle think it was a speed limit sign. Knowing how easy it is for a hacker to jeopardize the safety of the passengers of a self-driving cars further measures must be taken by the companies that are developing them to increase their security before they are open to the