(Originally published on LinkedIn in June 2024)
Stories of crashes involving autonomous cars have been widely published in the media, with Googles or Teslas cast as villains. I am not here to play the defense lawyer for them but I will play the engineer (which I actually am).
Autonomous driving systems and algorithms are “work in progress”, “under construction”, “going through the training” … whichever term you want to use. And just like humans under training, they might make mistakes (and just like humans, there is no guarantee that absolutely zero mistakes will be made once they have obtained their “license”). But unlike humans, these systems and algorithms 1) don’t make mistakes as often (number of mistakes per thousand or million kilometer driven is significantly less for the machines as compared to humans), 2) don’t drink and drive, 3) don’t text / call and drive, 4) don’t drive when extremely sleepy, tired or emotional, and 4) don’t cut corners (sometimes literally) to save a few seconds and end up causing mile-long traffic jams or worse – fatal accidents.
Because accidents caused by human drivers is a ubiquitous and everyday thing, we don’t pay attention to it. But every little incident involving autonomous cars makes big news because autonomous cars are a novelty and because such crashes give fodder to our suspicion of new technologies or big corporations.
As an engineer, I can tell you that the technology does a wonderful job making things safer out on the road. Yeah, it may not be as adept to novel traffic situations as humans but it is good with repetitive and mundane driving tasks that we humans so loathe (and isn’t every technology bad and good at the same time!?). What I am saying is that we don’t have to bash the technology every time it makes a little mistake. One, it is still improving. And two, it is already doing a much better job at many aspects of driving than us humans. Though, I might be biased because apart from being an automotive engineer, I am also a terrible driver and would give anything for a car that can park, drive, merge, exit, and park. (I know I mentioned parking twice; I am that bad at it!)