Self-Driving Vehicles1

Self-Driving Vehicles

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 Self-Driving Vehicles2

Abstract

Self-driving vehicles are receiving different opinions from different people and the attitude

towards these vehicles will determine how fats the technology will be successful in the transport

market. These vehicles have potential of changing people lives by ensuring they are not faced by

traffic congestion that is affecting most world cities. The vehicles have also the potential of

ensuring public safety on the roads and preserving environment by not emitting gases and sounds

which are experienced from fossil fuels driving vehicles. I have done research on several self-

driving cars users through a random interview to find out how their live have been impacted by

these vehicles. The research has proved that self-driving cars have positively impacted on the life

the users,
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Contents

Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 4

Review......................................................................................................................................... 5

Methodology ................................................................................................................................... 7

Data analysis ............................................................................................................................... 8

Results and Analysis ....................................................................................................................... 9

Discussion ..................................................................................................................................... 10

Conclusion and recommendations ................................................................................................ 11

Reference list ................................................................................................................................ 13

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Introduction

Self-driving vehicles represent the fast growth in the technology which is offering a

solution to problems that are emerging in the transport sector. They are changing approach on

people’s mobility by ensuring improved safety on the roads, and quality of life compared to

vehicles that require drivers (Nyholm, and Smids, 2016). Although the technology has not been

fully adopted due to people’s reluctance, the developed countries like the United States are

considering formulating policies that will enable rapid growth in these transport systems (Kelly,

2012). People have developed a positive attitude towards self-driving vehicles leading to

improvement of this infrastructure (Pedersen, 2018). The nature of self-driving technology

requires massive adaption by the people to ensure transformative benefits are realized. The

benefits include reduction of carbon emissions, reducing congestion and reducing the rate of

accidents which have become extreme in many parts of the world (Hars, 2015). Self-driving

vehicles put forward a transportation system which is controlling the negative impacts,

particularly on safety and sustainability. The capabilities of self-driving vehicles to have a

positive impact on the people depend on how people will massively embrace the technology

(Häne et al., 2017). Establishment of self-driving vehicles by critical mass will have great

positive impacts on the economy of scale, environment, road safety and time management

(Azmat, and Schuhmayer, 2015).

Objectives of this research are to find out how self-driving cars are impacting the lives of

people who are embracing it and how people are contributing to the success of the technology

(Ramos et al., 2017). This paper will, therefore, investigate how self-driving cars have changed

and are likely to change the way people live. This is because people’s attitude towards this

technology is very significant in ensuring achieves the targeted goals (Litman, 2017). Self-
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driving cars come with great advantages and people ought to be aware of the benefits so that they

are ready to take part in the implementation of the technology (Novitskiy, and Boyarskaya,

2016). The research will be guided by hypothesis that there will be significance increase in road

safety and reduction in environmental pollution if self-driving vehicles will intense their

operations (Daily et al. 2017). Self-driving cars will also help in environmental improvement.

Alternatively, the self-driving will drag behind the economy of people embracing them since the

project is expensive and will negatively affect the fuel economy (Brynjolfsson, & McAfee,

2012). Regulation on the use of self-driving cars by the government will have a great impact in

ensuring the new technology succeeds in the market. People’s attitude towards the technology

will determine whether the objectives of the technology are or not (Paden et al., 2016).

Review

According to Araujo, Manson, and spring (2012), before the 20th century, automobiles

did not dominate the transport system since the technology was now well established in the

industry. The automobile industry sector grew rapidly in the mid-20th century leading to

automobile becoming the common mode of transport in developed countries like USA and UK.

Since then, this is the main mode of transport connecting cities and urban areas in countries with

giant economies. These automobiles particularly the single occupant vehicles have increased

traffic congestion, traveler hindrance, and pollution emitted by the vehicles (Lee, Faundorfer,

and Pollefeys, 2013). These challenges have led to the improvement of the transport system in

countries such as the USA since they are costing the economy a lot of resources due to delays

and environmental destruction. Other developments in the automobile such as producing electric

drive instead of carbon fuel and gasoline vehicles have been invented to save the economy from

the losses (Birdsall, 2014). Self-driving cars, however, have been introduced a result of
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technology leap to put forward solutions to existing problems and also improve the existing

transportation network. Self-driving cars are motor vehicles which are able to fully drive and

navigate automatically without direct human contribution. They are designed to sense the

surrounding with features such as radar and GPS which enable them to locate a certain area or

direction. Self-driving vehicles will have negative effect on fuel business since locomotives

(mobile local motives) are its major. These vehicles will use electricity unlike the driven vehicles

which mostly use fossil fuel (Thrun, 2010).

Advanced control systems construe electronic sensor data to recognize fitting navigation

routes and help in avoiding any obstacles and obeying the road signs (Gerla et al., 2014). Self-

driving cars can trace their origins in the early 20th century when Achen Motor Company

established the first phantom motor car. Other automobile companies and university scholars

have attempted to experiment self-driving cars but have not been highly successful so far. Rapid

advancement in self-driving vehicles started in the 21st century where United States government-

sponsored events like Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Grand Challenge

in 2004 (Urmson, 2008). The event aimed at providing the platform for long distance

competition for self-driving cars, which saw more than one than one hundred teams of

innovators take part. The event was occasionally held with new technological development

coming up each day. The second challenge was striking and led to the innovation of Google self-

driving cars by Sebastian Thrun and his team (Bojarski, 2016). By the year 2013, many

automotive companies such as Toyota, Ford, Audi, Nissan, Mercedes Benz and General Motors’

have started production of self-driving vehicles. However, these companies have produced fully

self-driving cars but rather have produced those that can be switched to accommodate the driver

sometime due to customers’ desires (Howard, and Dai, 2014).

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Self-driving vehicles are capable of changing contemporary transportation to a more

sustainable, safer and suitable compared to vehicles that require drivers input (Urmson, 2008).

Driverless automobiles allow people to move when they want and be advantaged due to the

economies of scale which is derived from huge transportation network. Enhancement of safety

on the roads can be realized after extensive implementation of self-driving vehicles since they

follow and obey traffic rules compared to drivers in the 21st century who have become reckless

and disobedience to traffic rules (Berger and Christian, 2014). For instance, there were more than

30000 cases of roads accidents in 2010 in the United States which were caused by drivers who

were either dink, impaired or recklessly driving. Vehicle connection has helped in such cases

where approximately 81% of potential accidents are prevented annually due to the introduction

of self-driving technology (Narla, 2013). Self-driving development is inclusive of connected

vehicle technology which has enhanced safety in road network system (Surden, and Williams,

2016).

Methodology

Impacts of self-driving cars to people are very important since most of them are positive

and public attitude is important in ensuring the technology is effective. The changes are impacted

by the people my research project was centered on the public and data analyses. I first designed

the guiding questions which will guide me in the research. I adopted the hypothesis that self-

driving cars have positive impacts on people’s life compared to cars that require drivers input.

I. What are advantages of self-driving cars in people’s lives?

II. What are disadvantages of self-driving vehicles to the public?

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III. How are these impacts changing the life of the people who are embracing self-driving

cars technology?

Data analysis

To comprehend the change in the way of life of people who have embraced self-driving

cars, public opinion information is significance since public determine the success of this

technology. The main problem I encountered in conducting public data analyses was that public

did not have much knowledge of self-driving cars and the impacts they have on their life. I

collected data on the streets where I interviewed fifteen people who were having evening tea in

different hotels. I randomly selected the people who did not live in the city to find out the means

of transport they use while traveling to town. Most of these people were the civil servant and

businessmen who commuted in the city daily. I gave handkerchiefs and airtime to those who

responded as rewards and this motivated the respondents to give honest answers. The survey

took about 20-25 minutes since the questions were open-ended. The questions aimed at

identifying the common mean of transport the workers and businessmen were using and how

they have impacted on their life. The questions aimed at understanding the advantages the self-

driving cars have brought to their lives and the reasons they don’t like the technology. In the

research, I focused on the on the demographics and attitude towards the self-driving vehicles and

the technologies mounted on the vehicles.

I recorded the answers given on different A4 full scarps and filled them for analyses.

Those with similar answers which mostly focused on how life self-driving cars impacted on the

life of the civil servants and businessmen were placed on top while those that offered the

conflicting opinion were placed at the bottom. My research was limited by the fact that self-
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driving cars were not widely used by the most people I interviewed thus most of them failed to

give concrete answers. Some had only used the self-driving cars only once.

Results and Analysis

I moved to 10 different restaurants and requested more than 100 people to

conduct the interview but only 15 were familiar with the topic on the question. This shows that

only about 8% of the daily commuters understood the impacts of self-driving cars in their life. I

awarded 10 men and 5 women with different gifts since they were ready to answer the questions

on self-driving cars. This represented 75% of men and 25% of women who gave different

answers to the changes that they experienced by the introduction of self-driving cars technology.

The 15 members of the public who responded public who responded seemed to be well up in

terms of personal wealth. All of them afforded to a meal in a five-star hotel which is an indicator

they were not bad financially.

Out of fifteen, five claimed that self-driving cars have greatly reduced congestion

on roads which and this is prone to increase if the technology is going to be adopted in the

market. This is by enabling self-driving vehicles using routes which have fewer vehicles to

enable these vehicles to penetrate and take workers to the cities.

Another impact the interviewer highlighted was that they felt safer while traveling

in self-driving cars compared to the driven cars. The six who gave similar information said that

the ability to detect road signs and obey made them feel safer than driving themselves or relying

on driven vehicles. The fact that self-driving vehicles are able to sense other vehicles which they

are connected enables them to start instantly whenever the vehicles are almost colliding. The

vehicles had proved to be more responsive to the danger thus preventing the passengers from
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being injured while the others were not sure thus their comments were not considered in the

findings.

Ten of them responded to the environmental question and said that these cars used

less fuel which was friendly to the environment. Most of them used electricity which has little

emissions which do not impact highly on the environment. The interviewers claimed that this has

reduced environmental pollution making the environment safer for living things.

The entire fifteen interviewers claimed that self-driving cars will promote equality in

future since people from all classes will be using the more convenient vehicles compared to

different types of vehicles driven by people of different classes. Opening the market for self-

driving cars will enable more people to will provide an opportunity for those who have been

excluded from automobile market to purchase vehicles which will be environmentally friendly.

The interviews also agreed that self-driving cars could reduce Virtual Transportation

Management since their market will be altered by making it possible for these cars to carry more

than one person. Sharing self-driving cars will have a great impact on the people using them

since their environmental pollution will be reduced.

However, the fifteen interviewed noted that the technology was very expensive to ensure

it fully working. They also confirmed that self-driving vehicles were real threat to the economy

since they would reduce the use of fuel.

Discussion

Self-driving cars are very effective but have not been established in many parts of the

world since only 8% could comfortably answer questions on these cars (Yang, and Coughlin,
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2014). The cars had changed the lives of those using them since they were able to save time and

become more productive in other activities (Kessler, 2015). Self-driving cars were also able to

provide the environment with little carbon emissions since the vehicles are environmentally

friendly as responded by the ten individuals who were interviewed. The cars also reduced

congestion rate since the cars used less busy routes. The technology, however, would cost

individual and the state huge amount of money to ensure that h technology is working

(Greenblatt, 2016). These cars used electricity and would also affect negatively the economy of

fuels which is widely used by driven vehicles.

Conclusion and Recommendations

I would recommend governments from developed countries like the United States formulate

policies which will enable an increase in production and use of the self-driving car. This is to

enable citizens to contribute to solving environmental pollution problems. Driven vehicles use

fossils fuels or natural gases which are emitting harmful substance in the air leading to pollution.

The governments to educate citizens to educate citizens on the benefits of using self-driving cars

since they are very effective when it comes to reducing congestion and traffic jams. Since the

success of the technology rely on the public attitude towards the technology, equipping people

with the benefits of self-driving cars will impact positive attitude which will encourage people to

embrace the technology.

Self-driving should also be made accessible to the public so that people can get to see the

advantages of the vehicle and embrace the new technology. Without availing these vehicles to

the public, they will be reluctant in looking for self-driving cars from the manufacturers.
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Self-driving driving cars will bring change to the life of the people who will embrace this new

technology. The cars have reduced the level of environmental pollution which is mostly caused

by driven fossil fuel vehicles. Self-driving vehicles have also enhanced safety in road transport

where they have reduced t number of accidents through automatic sensing and obeying of road

signs. This has reduced the number of deaths that occur due to disobedient of traffic signs by

drunk and notorious drivers. The vehicles will impact equality in countries like the United States

which has regulated some people from buying fuel automobiles. Finally, the cars are greatly

reducing congestion and traffic jams in the cities since they are fast and prefer using routes

which do have traffic jams. From this, I can conclude that self-driving cars have positively

changed the lives of people whose the technology since they are free from air and noise

pollution, safe on the roads and free from traffic congestion which is major problems in most of

the world cities. Despite this technology being expensive, people to set a positive attitude

towards this technology and collaborate with government to ensure the positive changes are

being experienced.
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