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William Fridy

Professor Nadine Gordon

UWRT 1103

3/28/19

How Self-Driving Cars Impact Society

A topic that interests me is self-driving cars. While assisted-driver technology has been

around for several years, completely autonomous cars are starting to appear. Most car companies

are starting to develop and test cars that do not require a person controlling them. Companies

such as Tesla, Audi, Google, and BMW are developing and testing driverless cars that can one

day be sold to the public. The main reason I have chosen this topic is to explore the benefits and

impact of driverless cars on society. Autonomous cars will impact society in many ways,

including decreasing traffic, decreasing the number of accidents related to human error per year,

and how the sale of autonomous cars could change the US economy.

Before discussing how autonomous cars will impact society, it is important that one have

a basic understanding of how driverless cars work. To put it simply, the car has a series of

sensors and cameras that are used to detect where road lines are (Gupton). For sensing where

objects such as barriers, cars, and pedestrians are, autonomous cars use a form of radar (Gupton).

After sensing and interpreting all necessary information, the car then decides what speed to go,

what lane to travel in, and is always prepared to stop when something runs in front of it with very

little reaction time. Currently, fully autonomous cars are not legal in the United States, meaning

even if fully autonomous technology has been created, it can not be implemented into cars

available to the public until a law is passed, allowing this (Are Self-Driving).
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Self-driving cars have been in development for nearly 10 years. Over these past 10 years,

the multi-billion-dollar company Google has been developing their own autonomous car, named

Waymo. While developing Waymo, Google had Nevada’s Department of Motor Vehicles create

a “driving test” for it. The test involved Waymo navigating a construction zone, driving on the

highway, and stopping when something runs in front of it. The car succeeded in all categories

except for travelling through a construction zone (Harris). Google, after seeing how successful

Waymo was, decided that it was time for Waymo to drive around the state of California.

Waymo has been on the road for over five years, traveled over 10 million miles, and during this

time, has been in numerous accidents. However, every accident Waymo has been involved in,

none of the accidents were its fault (Burkitt). Seeing as how every accident was caused by a

human driver colliding with Waymo, the theory that autonomous cars are safer than conventional

cars seems to be reasonable. While having a car decide how to drive may seem like a bad

decision, it is in fact a better alternative to people driving cars. According to Susan Gupton,

around 94 percent of all vehicular accidents are caused by human error. Considering driverless

cars remove the human factor from driving, the number of accidents would greatly decrease if

human choice and human error was taken out of the equation.

Another benefit of autonomous cars is that traffic and fuel consumption will decrease as

more autonomous vehicles are present on the road. Some researchers believe that at some point

in the near future, autonomous cars will be able reduce fuel consumption by up to 40 percent

simply by reducing traffic on highways and in cities (Leong). This is possible because, unlike

conventional cars, autonomous vehicles would be able to minimize stop-and-go traffic by

reducing braking occurrences by 90 percent (Leong). These statistics were based off a study of a

handful of self-driving cars. Reducing fuel consumption by 40 percent and reducing braking by
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90% on highways was based on if only five percent of all cars on the road were autonomous.

With having such a small percent of cars on the road being autonomous, imagine if 20 percent of

all cars on roads in the United States. As car technology improves every year, one can only

imagine how efficient autonomous cars will be in five years.

The production and selling of autonomous cars would not only boost the economy of the

United States, but of the entire world. With Google spending over 1.1 billion dollars on the

development of Waymo, companies working on the development of Waymo are growing and

flourishing (Daily). This shows that companies are dedicated to creating a product that is safe for

people to use. Having a multi-billion-dollar company spend over one billion dollars on the

development on one car should increase the public’s desire to buy an autonomous car one day.

The autonomous car industry is projected to be a major player in the United States. Once fully

autonomous cars are readily available to the public, analysts believe that autonomous vehicles

will produce around 800 billion dollars annually for the United States economy (Autonomous).

This gargantuan number was decided upon by factoring in savings from better fuel efficiency,

reduced crashes, and easier access to transportation (Autonomous). Reducing accidents related to

human error would reduce injury-related medical bills by the millions, giving more people more

money to spend.

While fully autonomous vehicles are currently illegal in the United States ,except for

special occasions such as Waymo, legalizing completely self-driving cars would not only

improve the United States economy, but the worlds’ economy. Considering American car

companies such as Tesla are pioneers in the autonomous car industry, having an American car

company sell cars overseas could help bring back the United States car industry.
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In conclusion, driverless cars will positively impact society by boosting the economies of

the countries they are produced in, reducing traffic on highways and in cities, and by reducing

the number of accidents caused by human error. An autonomous cars ability to detect objects and

motion 360 degrees around it makes it an immensely safer alternative to a conventional car.

Assuming that the United States Federal Government passes a bill allowing completely

driverless cars to travel across all roads in the United States, combined with greatly improved

software and technology, could lead to a greatly improved society.

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Works Cited

“Are Self-Driving Cars Legal?” Hg.org, www.hg.org/legal-articles/are-self-driving-cars-legal-

31687.

"Autonomous Vehicles to Have Huge Impact on Economy, Tech Sector." Government

Technology State & Local Articles - E.Republic. Accessed March 21, 2019.

https://www.govtech.com/fs/automation/Autonomous-Vehicles-to-Have-Huge-Impact

on-Economy-Tech-Sector.

Burkitt, Bree. “Waymo Self-Driving Vehicle Involved in Arizona Crash.” USA Today, Gannett

Satellite Information Network, 17 June 2018, www.usatoday.com/story/tech/nation-

now/2018/06/17/waymo-self-driving-vehicle-arizona-crash/708809002/.

Daily, Mike, et al. "Self-Driving Cars." IEEE Explore. Accessed March 21, 2019.

https://ieeexplore-ieee-org.librarylink.uncc.edu/document/8220479.

Gupton, Nancy. “The Science of Self-Driving Cars.” The Franklin Institute, 10 Aug. 2016,

www.fi.edu/science-of-selfdriving-cars.

Harris, Mark. “How Google's Autonomous Car Passed the First U.S. State Self-Driving

Test.” IEEE Spectrum: Technology, Engineering, and Science News, IEEE Spectrum, 10
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Sept. 2014, spectrum.ieee.org/transportation/advanced-cars/how-googles-autonomous-

car-passed-the-first-us-state-selfdriving-test.

Leong, Jeanne. “Study Shows Autonomous Vehicles Can Help Improve Traffic Flow.” Phys.org
- News and Articles on Science and Technology, 20 Feb. 2018, phys.org/news/2018-02-
autonomous-vehicles-traffic.html.