Driverless driving

Before this piece becomes obselete in another few weeks, the state of Virginia will have concluded on the decision to allow the possibility of allowing autonomous, or self driving cars on express lane of Interstates 95 and 495 in Northern Virginia.

Tests will focus on whether autonomous vehicles could “talk” with each other and successfully run in the same lanes as regular traffic. The tests will similarly determine what wireless tools may be needed to keep the self driving vehicles on track.

Known as AV( Autonomous Vehicle) such services will be safer, reduce pollution and congestion, and will also bring about a paradigm shift in personal vehicle ownership rates, which are likely to decline steeply. The insane crave for car ownership may be resolved.

We don't need proof of research to prove that human error is responsible for 95% of fatal car accidents .When you eliminate human error, our roads become dramatically safer: no more drink-driving, phone calls at the wheel, carelessness, inattention or plain bad driving. Clearly there needs to be adequate industry testing to ensure that AVs are safe for all other road users, but we can look forward to far safer roads as human drivers become a thing of the past.

Back home, our public buses popularly known as “danfo” literally means autonomous run on similar or amended technology as the America’s pilot test and it has been in existence over the centuries with minimal casualtities according to our unavailable statistics.

The buses run on gas so also are the drivers, the only difference being in the high level of ethanol present in the drivers’ intake. Both bus and drivers are however agents of pollution as the buses belch carbon monoxide; the drivers suffocate the passengers with the smoke twirling from nicotine stained index fingers.

Perching suisidicaly on the tailboard of bus, in tattered under shirt and rythimically shouting bus stops and destinations is not the most approachable of customer service postures, but that is the best our research and development in that sector has been able to come up with.

There are always going to be drawbacks, even with precision technology.I am not convinced that silicon valley programmers, effectively driving the car remotely, are any more competent than the average driver.

However, with what we call roads, epileptic energy, newt-sized network and our autonomous leadership, we might as well for now and in the far future stick to our present mode of transportation. And then, hope that there will still be people left to embrace VA in year 4045 when this technology will become available to lesser nations.