Will Self-Driving Cars Make Drivers Obsolete?

CARS.COM — Will our roads be significantly safer by taking humans out of the driver’s seat?

Despite the safety advancements of modern cars and trucks, driving deaths have spiked higher in 2016. The alarming trend is significantly outpacing contributing factors — such as a stable economy and cheap fuel prices — that are putting more cars and people on the road. Could the best solution be to someday ban human drivers from taking the wheel?

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When cars can talk to each other in fractions of a second, a clunky human interface could make the difference between life and death.

Ban Human Drivers?

Many decades ago it was rare for a new car to come equipped with turn-signal indicators. Now they’re a government-mandated safety feature and no one would dream of owning a vehicle without them. Will this same thinking one day apply to the integration of self-driving systems — an era of fully autonomous, or self-driving, cars that relegates humans to being obsolete in the march toward creating safer roadways?

An op-ed article in Newsweek looks far into the future of self-driving technology, to a point where cars take control of all driving — and do it much better than we ever could. “Some day in the not-too-distant future,” writes Michael Dorf, “the claim that people should be permitted to drive their own cars will sound as implausible as the claim that people should be permitted to drive drunk.” Dorf asserts that the “quaint” desire to drive a car will one day be comparable to hipsters who “prefer typewriters to laptops, vinyl records to Spotify.”

Should I care? Staying alive is priority No. 1 during any drive, no matter if you’re carving corners in a Mazda MX-5 Miata or cruising down the highway in a Tesla Model S. While not everyone will agree that driving a vehicle might eventually be as charming as hand-cranking a Ford Model T or Victrola record player, there’s no doubt that driving-related fatalities remain a serious — and growing — issue.

The first six months of 2016 marked another spike upward in driving deaths, with the Federal Highway Administration reporting 17,775 driving fatalities during that period. That figure represents a 10.4 percent increase compared to the same time period in 2015. True, current travel trends mean there are more cars on the road but, as this Cars.com story explains, not to a degree that corresponds with the number of fatalities seen so far.

A government-sponsored safety initiative, called Road to Zero, aims to eliminate highway driving deaths within 30 years. Improved roads and better driver education are short-term solutions, though the true leap toward making this a reality could mean taking humans out of the driving equation entirely.

Taking Mom Out of ‘Soccer Mom Minivans’

Judging by these recent spy photos, the future of self-driving is closer than you think. A fleet of hybrid -powered 2017 Chrysler Pacifica minivans, equipped with Google’s latest autonomous-drive hardware, has been spotted in a parking garage at Google’s global headquarters in Mountain View, Calif.

Should I care? The corporate heft of a Google/Fiat Chrysler Automobiles partnership speaks volumes about how self-driving cars are set to enter the mainstream automobile market. Until now, the tech has been limited to luxury brands and models with substantial sticker prices. You can’t get more mainstream than a minivan, however.

As Cars.com reported when the partnership was first announced, the project’s goal is to allow Google and FCA the chance to “to gain a better understanding of the challenges they face in bringing a self-driving car to the real-world market.”

While these candid pictures were taken at some distance, it’s clear that some clunky design aspects of previous self-driving prototypes — such as huge sensor arrays atop a vehicle’s roof — are less ungainly and better integrated into the design of the Pacifica. Approximately 100 self-driving Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid minivans are scheduled to become part of Google’s expanding fleet of autonomous-drive vehicles.