Whether you like it or not, fully autonomous cars are coming and will, sooner rather than later, hit the streets.
Beyond the obvious technical challenges of designing vehicles that can drive themselves, they need to be capable of interacting with other autonomous vehicles, pedestrians and have the capacity to adapt to different driving styles around the world.
Another emerging challenge could be how autonomous vehicles will interact with drivers of conventional cars.
According to a survey conducted by the London School of Economics, the majority of the 12,000 drivers surveyed said they would be able to take advantage of autonomous cars by forcing them to stop or give way in a number of confrontational situations, Forbes reports.
For example, one UK respondent said that self-driving cars could easily be taken advantage of: “They’re going to stop and you’re just going to nip round.” Others in the survey expressed concerns about how self-driving cars will interact with ordinary drivers , with one respondent saying: “If there were only autonomous cars, however, I would maybe feel even safer. But this mix, I don’t like so much.”
Despite this, head of market intelligence and analysis at Octo Telematics, Andrew Lee, believes that autonomous cars will be more capable than most humans, eliminating the possibility of them being manipulated on the road.
“I would expect the AI to be perfected and drive closer to what you and I would expect in a good and experienced driver – developers are and should be designing to this standard. There have been suggestions that the autonomous car could outperform a human driver, as it can drive closer to the limits of the vehicle,” he said.
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