Taking Self-Driving Cars One Step at a Time
If you haven’t seen the YouTube video of the 70-year-old woman behind the wheel of a self-driving Tesla, take a look. She’s clearly not ready for the age of autonomous vehicles.
She’s not alone. For many people, it’s a futuristic idea that they can’t get their heads around. There still aren’t laws in place to deal with a vehicle that isn’t controlled by humans. It’s hard to tell where the cars are legal in the US. When a Google test vehicle got into a minor collision, it made international news.
The First Step: Vehicle-to-Vehicle Communication
There is uncertainty about how autonomous vehicles will develop and where the technology will go. The good news is that in the short term, the technology can still help to save thousands of lives.
The research that has gone into developing autonomous cars is already being put to use today. Sensors that tell you a car is in your blind spot, automatic stopping and collision avoidance systems have all come to us thanks to the ongoing work towards autonomous vehicles.
Before we reach a point where we can sit back and relax and let a driverless car chauffeur us to our destination, vehicle-to-vehicle communication will make our roads safer.
Eliminating Human Error Accidents
Traffic accidents seriously injure and kill tens of thousands of people each year. According to Transport Canada, in Canada in 2013, there were 1923 vehicle fatalities and 10,315 serious injuries. In the US, in the first six months of 2015, the National Safety Council reported 18,640 deaths from car accidents, up 14% from the same period in 2014.
These numbers can be greatly reduced as new cars come on the marked equipped with the ability to communicate with each other. Vehicles equipped with this technology will broadcast information to their surroundings, which other V2V-equipped vehicles can then receive. This includes information about speed, location, direction of travel, and more.
Vehicles will have the ability to pick up the signals, effectively eliminating the most common types of accidents caused by human error. Road warnings about congestion, bad weather, and driving restrictions will also make commutes safer and less frustrating.
Securing the Way
All this will happen while the driver is still in control behind the wheel. And we won’t have to wait 30 years. Vehicles today already have sophisticated collision avoidance systems. Eventually, they will be a standard safety feature in all vehicles, with the National Transportation Safety Board in the US recommending that collision avoidance systems be available in all commercial and non-commercial vehicles.
At TrustPoint, we are proud to play a part in making our roads safer. By securing the communication between vehicles and the V2V infrastructure, drivers will know they can trust the information they receive.
Watch our V2V video to learn more about TrustPoint’s role in securing V2V communication.