As soon as I wake up, the first thing I do is check my Twitter handle to scan updates on my cellphone. Today, Dec 25, 2021, I saw I-94 was trending on Twitter with the news of a 40+ vehicle pileup in Wisconsin. NBC Reported, 100+ vehicles were involved in crashes along I-94 in Jackson County, WI.
The vehicles piled up because of the freezing rain, which turned into an icy road from Menomonie to Black River Falls.
The post reported that before 6:00 AM, the Stat Petrol responded to the crashes; when they arrived, they saw a semi-truck on fire and two passenger vehicles trapped underneath it.
The trapped passengers in the vehicle under the truck took to a safe place after rescuing from the car. The state patrol reported that no one was killed or received life-threatening injuries.
As I live in the remote winter area, I understand how hard it is to handle life under extreme weather conditions. We already know that 94% of accidents happen due to human error. By keeping these issues in mind, I am pretty optimistic about self-driving cars handling the situation from a safety perspective and fixing the 94% error.
Self-Driving Cars vs. Human Error
The concept of self-driving vehicles has been thought by some people to remain only in the domains of sci-fi movies and books. However, the last few years have introduced solid technological advancements to make autonomous cars an upcoming reality.
However, we are not that close as Mr. Musk, the world’s richest man, would like us to be. Even though the American people have a friendly attitude towards technological advancements, there are vast misconceptions about the concept of autonomous driving. To some people, it is insanity to think that they’ll just let their hands off their steering and let the car do the driving for them.
Back to the point, human vs. machine, in reality, it’s almost always a human error. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s page “Automated Vehicles for Safety,” 94% of fatal collisions are caused by human error. Human error will be eliminated by self-driving cars.
Conclusion
At this stage of research, I am not sure how self-driving technology will handle the icy road conditions. But I am sure if the human error is 94% caused by many factors: emotions, road rages, sudden confront with black ice, and panic.
In this case, an autonomous system can add an extra variable to solve the equation by constantly observing the weather conditions while driving with extra care. The self-driving system will not text, show emotions, or eat while working. The primary purpose of the autonomous system is to be a 100% safe journey for the passengers or, in another sense, to completely resolve the human error, which is 94% at the moment.
But if it’s impossible to avoid a crash, then the car can take a calculated risk without getting the emotions involved while making a decision.
Thank you for reading!
