Self-Driving Cars

SENIOR CAPSTONE
JACOB BLACKWELL
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Jacob Blackwell

Senior Capstone

Mrs. Spear

18 February 2017

Self-Driving Cars

What is the next best thing? A self-driving car. It is the most up to date, modernized piece

of technology since the smart phone. A self-driving car is for anyone. It is safe, quick, can

become inexpensive, and eco-friendly. One thing about the self-driving car is that it defeats all

terrifying statistics. Auto mobile accidents will soon become extinct leaving everyone in a car

safe and unbothered. Even though the idea of a self-driving car seems very twenty-first century it

still has much to overcome. The amount of technology that has to go into one car is very

advanced. With the amount of technology that goes into just one car, it all comes at a cost.

However, the more people use a self-driving car and becomes more popular the cost will go

down because of the demand for it. According to the Paris-based OECDs International Transport

Forum (ITF), one of the neat bonuses of driverless, computer-driven cars, will be a return of

empty side streets. Not only will the car help people driving and making road conditions safer, it

will also be helping the environment. It would not use gas, so if large numbers of people had

self-driving cars the air pollution could potentially get better. With helping the environment, it

will also help the number of road fatalities that come with people driving cars.

A self-driving car is in the name itself. The self-driving car called, an automous car, a

driverless car, and a robotic car. It is a lot smarter than it looks. The car can sense its

surroundings and navigates on its on just like a living breathing human. Many companies have

attempted to develop the self-driving car, but only a few have completed the prototype. Google
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says, the program is currently in prototype stage, but it plans to build around one hundred early

versions of the vehicles for testing this summer (Lowesohn). Companies that have successfully

completed the prototype include, Audi, Volvo and even companies like Google and Uber! Uber

has even gone passed the prototype stage and have moved a few of their cars to the streets of San

Francisco, CA, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and even the busy streets of New York.

The self-driving car, like any other, looks like an ordinary car. Googles original design is

made without pedals or a steering wheel. It is solely running on multiple efficient on-board

computer systems and sensors. The body of the Google self-driving car is a twin to the Fiat 500.

The Google car fits two people and while being made with playmobile toys, it will also include

manual controls incase anything goes wrong. The car itself is engineered using off-the-shelf

car parts that includes the heavy use of foam and an electric motor which runs off of electricity.

Abiding by all laws, the car just like every other, it must include air bags and seat belts.

The self-driving car would be very eco-friendly. It wouldnt run on fossil fuel which can

be very beneficial to the environment including the air pollution. It would run off of electricity

from batteries. However, the downfall of this would be on long road trips you would have to

constantly stop and charge the batteries. Since it does not burn fuels the air quality, in

particularly large cities, would become much cleaner.

Googles self-driving car you could say has a brain of its own. It is said that it is the heart

of our system, which is a lazar range-finder mounted on the roof of the car. The device,

Velodyne 64-beam lazar, generates a 3D detailed map of the environment. The car then combines

the lazar measurements with high-resolution maps of the world, producing different types of data

models that allows it to drive itself while avoiding obstacles and respecting traffic laws

(Guizzo). Along with the laser beam the vehicle has other sensors. They have four radars that are
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on the front and rear bumpers. This will allow the car to look forward enough to be able to deal

with fast traffic that is on the freeways or interstates. There is a camera, which is near the

rearview mirror, and this detects traffic lights. There are three gadgets that work together and

figure out the vehicles location and keep track of its movements. These three gadgets are a GPS,

an inertial measurement, and a wheel encoder. In order for the cars to operate most efficiently,

they would need to communicate with one another, helping to identify traffic problems or road

risks early on.

The prices to make a self-driving car can be discouraging. The cost of implementing the

new technology could be way out of reach for most American budgets. Currently, the

engineering, power and computer requirements, software, and sensors add up to more than

$100,000. For the laser beam itself is $75,000. The Inertial measurement unit is $500 and wheel

encoder is $320. All of that those parts put together costs more than a brand new high end car.

There could be a good side to this. Even though they are expensive they can actually be very

helpful. These cars are encoded to drive closer to each other which is expected to open 80-90%

of the roads. This can lower the traffic rates and amount of commute times to the mornings and

evenings. Even though the cars are programmed to drive close together they are also

programmed to watch for surroundings. This would lower the amount of wrecks due to lack of

attention and rear-ending someone. A way that the costs could go down is by the demand of the

car. The more people that buy the car the less the car will be. This can help with the production

costs as well. This higher the demand the lower the costs will be.

It is a fact that the primary reason that traffic problems exist today is because of the

average drivers reaction time. YouTube video producer, CGP Grey, says, as each person moves

in traffic, the reaction time delays when the next person can go, and the result is gridlock in town
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and slow down on the highways, even after the obstruction or distraction is gone. Grey explains,

traffic jams are a problem of imperfect information: the light turns green, and then drivers in

sequence accelerate, rather than all moving together, at the same time. This is something humans

do out of caution and prudence; without direct acceleration information fed to our cars from

other cars, we have to rely on observed movement and distances to try and get it right. Thats

inefficient, from a travel perspective, and while its the best we can do now, it doesnt have to be

the best humans can do, ever. Grey believes that the solution to avoiding traffic is self-driving

cars. The self-driving car, if being manufactured, would eliminate the issues with reaction times

and eventually be able to communicate with other automobiles and other infrastructures and

possibly even removing the need of traffic signals.

Googles over watching goal with the self-driving car program has been to develop

vehicles that are safer than ones driven by humans. An average of 33,000 Americans die from

auto accidents each year. That number than multiplies killing 1.2 million worldwide. Google

believes that they can drastically lower that number with their self-driving car. (lowensohn)

The total population as of 2015 in the U.S. was 321,418,820. The total miles traveled by

Americans in millions was 3,095,373. That year there were 35,092 auto mobile fatalities. The

fatalities per every 100,000 people was 10.92. The fatalities per every 100 million was 1.13. Due

to being under the influence per alcohol there were 10,265 deaths. That is having 0.8+ alcohol

level in the drivers blood stream. Per every 100 million people .33 people killed, which equals

twenty-nine percent.

Per annual United States road crash stats, over 37,000 die in a road crash each year. An

additional 2.35 million are injured or disabled in a car crash. Over 1,600 children under 15 years

of age are killed in an accident. Nearly 8,000 people are killed involving drivers each year that
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are 16 to 20 years of age. Road crashes cost the United States $230.6 billion each year, which

comes out to be on average $820 per person. Road crashes are the single greatest annual cause of

death of healthy United States citizens traveling abroad.

As of 2015 the total number of fatalities occurring in a car crash in Tennessee was 958.

The number of rural car crashes was 479 leaving 477 fatalities in urban areas. There were 2

crashes that were unknown. In Tennessee per every 100 million miles the average amount of

deaths came out to be 1.25.

The number of people that were not driving, but riding in the car that were killed was

684. Even though 302 passengers were wearing a seatbelt at the time of the crash they were still

fell victim to the accident. However, there were 332 passengers killed that were not wearing seat

belts. There are still 50 people that were killed in a crash that it is unknown if they had a seat belt

on or not.

In Tennessee, there are different causes to auto mobile deaths. The highest leading cause

of fatalities in Tennessee is alcohol impaired, which is 252 people. The next leading cause is

speeding which is 187. The total number for motorcycle accidents in 2015 were 123. Motorcycle

deaths in Tennessee are broken down into two categories, which are if the driver was wearing a

helmet or not. The number of helmeted motorcycle fatalities is 109. The number of drivers that

were killed while not wearing a helmet were 12. The fatalities of bicyclist and other cyclists is

10. The number of pedestrian fatalities because of auto mobiles is 104.

There are other cases where the driver is involved in a car accident but not killed. The

total number of car crashes without fatalities in 2015 was 1,347. For ages 15-21 there were 103

people involved in fatal crashes. Ages 21 and over there were 1,233 people involved in fatal

crashes. There are 11 cases where there was not an age specified of the driver after the crash.
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As of 2015 there are 678,889 residents in Nashville, Tennessee. With that being said

traffic is a rapidly growing issue. Nashville having some of the most used highways in the state

makes driving at certain times a lot harder, more stressful, and definitely more time consuming.

If Nashville were to get self-driving cars it would benefit traffic in numerous ways. With the cars

utilizing 80-90% more of the rode this would allow more traffic to flow in Nashville.

If there were self-driving cars were available to the public the world would be a safer

place. With the self-driving car, there would be no room for flaws. For starters, there will be little

to no wrecks once the cars are made to perfection. With that happening it lowers the yearly rate

or average of fatalities caused by automobiles which as of 2015 was 33,000. Self-driving cars

would take the risk of wrecking away. The reasons there are wrecks today is because humans are

not perfect. Some people fall asleep at the wheel, others are intoxicated and some people just

cant drive. With a car like this the risks are ultimately eliminated. Another way cars like these

can help is they use all spaces of the roads. Humans dont drive at the same rate of speed or react

to things at the same time which potentially makes traffic a lot worse. A self-driving car would

react to all of the stop lights and stop signs at the same time and make traffic disappear before it

even forms.

The self-driving car is not trusted by everyone. After all it is one big computer. While

computers are thought to be mistake free they do have flaws like humans. The difference

between technology and humans is not that there are or are not flaws but the number of flaws

given by each item. One of the major reasons self-driving cars are being manufactured is to

attempt to prevent the cause of an accident. The self-driving car will not completely wipe out the

possibility of an automobile accident. In the event that there is a self-driving car accident, who

would be at fault? There would not be someone driving the car manually. Would it be the car
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manufacturer? The person who created the car? What about the person who created the sensors

on the cars? Those questions are hard to answer without holding a human or living organism

accountable. It could possibly become a state based or nation based issue. For example, if there

was an accident the state or federal government could step in and handle the situation.

There are many pros and cons to a self-driving car. For every good thing that is put into

the car there is a possibility that it could make the car malfunction. If everything works like it is

supposed to, the car will be one of the greatest inventions yet. However, there are many obstacles

that the engineers developing the car have to overcome before the car is perfect and can be put

out on the city streets. The car must pass safety and other manufacturing laws and rules, just as

every new car does. Even though the car can be pretty pricey, in the end you get what you pay

for and that is to be as safe as you possibly can. Going forward, the self-driving cars main

objective is to decrease all deathly and injury acquiring statistics set by humans over the past

years. Engineers along with technology researchers need to come together to build a single

product that can soon make the world a safer place.

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Works Cited
cdan.nhtsa.gov/SASStoredProcess/guest.
Guizzo, Erico. How Google's Self-Driving Car Works. IEEE Spectrum: Technology,
Engineering, and Science News, IEEE Spectrum, 18 Oct. 2011,
spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/artificial-intelligence/how-google-self-driving-car
-works. Accessed 7 Feb. 2017.
Https://www.facebook.com/athertonkd. Watch: How Self Driving Cars Could End Traffic
Jams. Popular Science, www.popsci.com/watch-how-self-driving-cars-could-end
-traffic-jams. Accessed 9 Feb. 2017.
Lowensohn, Josh. Google Made a Self-Driving Car, and It Doesn't Have a Steering Wheel.
The Verge, The Verge, 27 May 2014, www.theverge.com/2014/5/27/5756436/this-is-
googles-own-self-driving-car. Accessed 7 Feb. 2017.
Stocksdale, Joel. Why Self-Driving Cars Could Solve Traffic Problems, but Won't Anytime
Soon. Autoblog, Autoblog, 31 Aug. 2016, www.autoblog.com/2016/08/31/self-driving-
cars-solve-traffic-video/. Accessed 9 Feb. 2017.
Top 20 Pros and Cons Associated With Self-Driving Cars. Top 20 Pros and Cons Associated
With Self-Driving Cars, www.autoinsurancecenter.com/top-20-pros-and-cons-associated-
with-self-driving-cars.htm. Accessed 18 Feb. 2017.