[Brishti]

Yes they would, me being a programmer and with a degree in AI can guarantee a well tested system with the needed raw data "images/radar/etc" can calculate data points many times faster than a human mind for car drive purposes.

AI's are of several types but for car drive it will be of a learning type wit pre defined DB. The phones that are coming with AI now a days have a fixed DB that can be utilized by the AI but is not updated all the time as a independent notion it needs central to issue an update.

An adaptive AI can learn over the years and add to the local style of driving over the base information it has. For example it would already know all the road rules but regional specific things like everyday too much traffic or std hilly roads or constant rainy weather adaptability would be added on top of it to make the AI more current road aware.

The bases of these AI's have to be made bullet proof first and there is where everyone including google/uber/etc are for now.

[SajiNSalin]

Today the technology for autonomous cars is very much available. The problem arises when you mix human drivers and autonomous cars, the irrational behaviour of the human driver confuses the driverless cars leading to accidents.

Imagine a situation in the future when all transport is driver free and they run on smart highways. The close interaction of the autonomous cars with the smart highway ensures rigorous discipline which is not possible with human controlled cars. No car will be able to jump a red light, overspeed, overtake from the wrong side and do all the mischief that irresponsible drivers do. If these cars are available for public use using credit cards and all one needs to do is specify your destination, sit back and relax, it would be a a much safer world. All technological elements required for such a scenario exists today.

But then would Team - BHP be relevant?

[the_skyliner]

It is quite obvious that any automation will bring more accuracy to the process and same goes for traffic. And in fact in this case it will be even more so as the road users are individuals and so they are free to behave in different ways unlike say trained man power in a factory.

Initial niggles might be there but then there will be trial runs and subsequently "fool" proofing will be done.

However, it will indeed be a sad day (if that day ever comes) when the whole road driving thing will be autonomous and one will have to obtain permit to drive and that too on few special tracks/roads.

[Anuruddhs]

Current systems used in ADAS are more power consuming and costly, Cost will reduce significantly in coming years and algorithms will improve based on feedback. In couple of years from now you will see much improved self driving cars and I am proud to be part of that development process.

[Shome]

Every technology needs time to mature and autonomous cars is the next step in the evolutionary process. Driver aids already introduced worldwide, have already led to massive safety improvements and will pave the way for Autonomous vehicles. A couple of decades down the line, I feel autonomous cars will be the norm.

Keywords: 'Couple of decades'. Current conditions are too chaotic for these technologies to cope with where there are rash drivers, jay walkers etc. But hopefully, more vehicles with driver aids in the future will pave the way for autonomous vehicles.

Vote: Yes

[Durango Dude]

I think an automonous driven car would appear like a 'newbie' driven car to others, doing things by the book and travelling at a sedate speed. That said there some stupid speed limits like 20 kmph in our cities. This would be a recipe for disaster and sometimes 'road rage'. Things are too chaotic on our roads for these technologies be unleashed. If and when they do this they have to regulate traffic to the strictest standards or completely do away with humans and depend on Bot's alone to drive us around; Humans and Bots don't think alike (I've said this before).

A first step towards this would be to get Bot's to do house chores and let people get acclimatised to how the Bot's work and then unleash driver less cars.

[Jeroen]

I'm absolutely certain autonomous cars will bring a decrease in accident rates. As many have pointed out, human error is a huge contributor to road accidents.

As with all automation it will also introduce some new accidents, specific to being autonomous. (E.g. before auto-pilots were introduced in aircraft there were no auto-pilots related accidents. These days there are numerous, but the overall safety level due to automation has still increased substantially)

You can look at all sorts of other industries where automation has been a great contributor to overall safety, e.g. aviation, maritime operations, industrial process automation etc. etc.

Even at the current level these cars are likely to do considerable better than humans on average and or from a statistical point of view.
However, autonomous cars will need to do much better than the average driver most likely. You can see that in some of the discussion on some of these accidents. People will refer to the fact that a human driver would have intervened, where the computer did not. I dont think so. A human drive might have intervened but there is no certainty at all. In fact there are plenty of (fatal) accidents where human driver could have intervened, but did not or not adequately.

There is this huge debate now about how an autonomous car is going to take ethical decisions. An example is as follows, an autonomous car is facing in situation that it needs to swerve to avoid major accident. But it only has two options: It can swerve left and run an old 94 year old lady down, or it can swerve right and run over a group of young kids. What does it do.

Truth is that from an ethical point of view people could debate till the cows come home on these and similar scenarios. But what I find remarkable that for humans we dont ask these questions, we dont test that sort of decision making and truth be told, very few would be able to make those split second decisions anyway. So for human its a non issue. So why is it an issue for an autonomous car.

Apperently, it makes a huge difference whether you a run over by a human driver or a robot. When you are on the receving end, it really doesnt matter.

Its fairly straight forward to prove statistically an autonomous cars is going to be safer than one with a human driver. To accept that an implement policies, law and regulations and have the public at large except it is the tricky part.

Most of us will happily step into an elevator. Which is just an autonomous vertical transport system. Quite a few more will not feel so comfortable stepping into a driverless train or metro system, even the simple ones you get at airports. Whereas that is in essence just an elevator made horizontally.

Jeroen

[Kingston]

I voted Yes. Call me an optimist

The AI tech that is currently in place is not suitable for Indian conditions. But that said, with the right hardware and machine learning combined, AI could avoid many minor accidents caused by bikers cutting in, pedestrians jumping in from the median or heavy vehicles not following lane discipline or people jumping signals.

Not even the most trained driver can boast of not being in any of these situations. Also, AI can be tuned to be on the safer side whilst humans are known to cut it close. For the safer drivers out there this means infuriation which leads to the tiresome commute. AI can solve all this.

Technology has made huge strides and none of this is immediately possible and economically feasible (for the mass market) for us. However, as you see with technology, you never know where we would be in a decade from now. I just want to applaud those involved in such projects (commercial and otherwise) on their efforts in making the world a better place.

[nmenon]

Autonomous cars cannot bring down accident rates on their own.
It would take a mindset change from the public on the road, other users and drivers to make a difference.
Taking the situation of Indian roads into perspective.
I voted No because a full.mindset change will be required for the reduction of accidents along with a full overhaul of existing infrastructure.
Additionally until such time as all cars go autonomous or there are separate enforced lanes for autonomous and normal vehicles, the potential for chaos is always there.

So a switch to autonomous cars alone wouldn't reduce accidents. It will require a full overhaul of all allied systems and public mentality.

[carfreak]

I voted for 'Yes'

Of course, this is provided the infrastructure develops to a sufficient degree. Accidents may still happen, no matter how advanced technology will be in the future but there is no doubt it will be safer than a human behind the wheel. Basically, there are more chances of human error than a machine error.

However no idea when the infrastructure will develop to support autonomous cars. Hopefully only after I have had my share of enjoying the fun to drive cars!

[sushantr5]

Autonomous vehicles will be equipped with AI and Data Analytics. It is for sure going to be safest drivers which can reduce accidents in good extents. Human Drivers will have limited run now. The way in which Google and Tesla is making progress, it feels that it will happen sooner than expected. Whole ownership pattern is going to change and future will be ruled by companies like Uder, Lyft. I am not sure when it will happen in INdia but western countries are on the verge of massive change in coming 3-4 years.

[V.Narayan]

Originally Posted by SajiNSalin

Today the technology for autonomous cars is very much available..... If these cars are available for public use using credit cards and all one needs to do is specify your destination, sit back and relax, it would be a a much safer world. All technological elements required for such a scenario exists today.

But then would Team - BHP be relevant?

Great question. So long as humans need to transport themselves physically and need to buy or hire their mode of transport and what you hire/buy is a representation of your socio-economic status till then Team BHP would be relevant. Only thing is that instead of discussing BHP our grand kids would be discussing KVA and petabytes in the A.I.! Personalized flying machines anyone?

[kozhissery]

Yes, it will decrease the number of accidents. Why/How?

There will be a time where all the cars will have some transmitters/receiver to mark its position, speed, angle etc. Based on this information the cars can easily navigate through any mesh (oh i mean our roads)

After the above is dealt, it needs intelligence to avoid other road blocks (Humans and Animals). I think this can be easily achieved in another couple of years. Even now there are cameras on roads which automatically take photos of speeding cars and raise the tickets. Just take the case of new Apple's iPhone X, it has face recognition system (which includes IR based system)

I feel in future even traffic signals will be out as each vehicle will communicate with each other and master switch or something like that will be placed in junctions (instead of Traffic signals) and give the necessary instructions.

[GRAND23]

I voted yes.
I believe technology is going to rule us in future. Initially there may be some glitches in autonomous cars. But this is going to evolve over the years just like our smartphone.
Definitely this is going to bring down accidents.
Are you looking for live Example? Auto pilot in aircraft nowadays takes over the control which has lead to significant reduction in air accidents.

[ACM]

Noted No BY MISTAKE. Wanted to vote yes. If a Mod can correct it would be good.

Accidents would go down significantly due to absence of human error. That much is obvious.

But who will handle the blame when things go wrong? That will take some figuring out and delay implementation. Also in a world where both autonomous and manually driven cars exist will the human involved in the accident accept his fault over that of a machine. Will require to be shown video proof.