Driverless cars have increased in popularity in recent years and gradually become an essential part of human’s life. Although some people think this is a positive development, I, on the other hand, disagree with the idea. I will state my argument in the following essay.
On the one hand, the use of driverless cars can be beneficial to both individuals and society. The reasons are as follow. To begin with, it can help alleviate traffic congestion in places where traffic lights are installed because nowadays, the slowdown in traffic are mainly man-made either because drivers are distracted by other tasks or simply do not pay attention to the lights. However, this is inevitable due to the impracticality of requiring drivers to constantly pay attention to the lights and making sure that they resume driving as soon as the light is changed. With a wider use of driverless cars, traffic will flow a lot faster and minimize the impact of man-made delay to the traffic flow. Furthermore, it’s said that many accidents are caused by human error. If cars are driven by a computer program, it is likely that the number of accidents on the road can be reduced and thus, help to maintain the fast-flowing traffic. This can reduce the time required for commuters to travel to work on a regular basis and also eliminate the need to assign extra staff to patrol the city in rush hours.
On the other hand, since driverless cars are a relatively new invention, the technology used to manufacture them has not yet reached its optimum stage. It can of course benefit human and society greatly, however, if it is put in to wide use without checking whether the performance of the system is stable, then it will not help alleviate traffic but to exacerbate it. Imagine the chaos caused from the delay in the response of the system due to unstable internet connection or sometimes the breakdown of the system due to the inability of handling the volume of users.
In conclusion, self-driving cars can be an invention that effectively alleviate traffic congestion. However, it should be noted that in order to make the most of the invention, we should ensure the system has reached its optimum stage before putting it into wider use.