Autonomous Driving Technology
Causal loop Diagram with Causal Factors
Below is a loop diagram that shows all the causal factors in autonomous driving technology. This help in analyzing the problems that surround the need for this technology. The arrows indicate the interrelationship.
Problem Analysis
Many accidents usually occur all over the world daily. Millions of people lose their life in every year. Many of the goods that require transport do not reach their destination as needed due to the accident. The road accident case is well known to result in the immediate effects and the secondary ones. Various research that has been conducted has shown that most accident is caused by human error. Approximately 85% of the casualties in the United States is a result of driver's mistakes. (Dimitrakopoulos (2018).
Road accidents usually have a significant impact on the family and health sector. As I have illustrated in the causal factor, road accidents affect the health centres so that they increase the number of patients in the hospitals. In case the person loses life through a road accident, the family is negatively affected. The victim may be one's breadwinner of the family. This means that the family will lose a provider. The children of the deceased may end up in the street. To sustain their life, they may end involving themselves in criminal activities. This means the rate of crime will substantially increase. Therefore the causal factor of the crime gets in there.
To analysis the problem better, it is good to look at both sides of the sword. Autonomous technology will have a significant impact on drivers. Many people are employed as drivers in automobiles. In case the Autonomous Driving Technology is implemented, it reduces the number of employees. (Birnbacher (2017). It will also lead to a dilemma of who will be responsible if there is a fail in the driving technology. In addition to the problem of unemployment and difficulty in the case, there is a failure in this system; there is also a problem of the reasoning. It is worth noting there are times when driving requires critical thinking and the ability to be decisive. How will autonomous driving technology cope up with this?
There are many cases in which the problem of road accidents have been tried to be solved. This included servicing of the vehicle and the driver being taken to learn driving in the qualified schools. This played an essential role in reducing the rate of accidents. I learned from those attempts that the main problem of most accidents is ignorance and drivers error. This problem can be amicably be solved using Autonomous Driving Technology.
Apart from the modern means that have been tried to solve this problem of road accidents, there are also a few traditional standards. Some of these methods include a vehicle with two drivers who can exchange driving if one is tired. This played an essential role, too, through it not bearing fruit. (Glaser (2019). Some analogue problems that have played an indispensable role in proposing Autonomous Driving Technology are forgery of the driving licenses and bribery among the traffic police. In case a driver is caught having a problem, they are released, thus endangering others. Autonomous Driving Technology will well solve this problem.
The insight that I can gain from those cases is the elimination of the drivers on the road. The above two cases show that they are the core cause of many problems faced on the road. Just look at the scenario in which a driver without any qualification is driving the passengers to their intended destination. There is a high chance that the driver may not arrive safely as they may encounter obstacles requiring a qualified driver. This shows that autonomous technology will amicably solve this problem.
In conclusion, using a system thinking approach, it is beyond a reasonable doubt that the main problem is road accidents that lead to the loss of life. Many people lose millions of goods in road accidents as in a severe accident; the owner loses the goods and the vehicle. Autonomous driving technology is intended to solve these problems as it will curb human errors and ignorance. It will allow safe delivery of goods and on time as these vehicles will be programmed on time. The technology will play an essential role in reducing traffic congestion. Unfortunately, this innovation will be accompanied by several problems, but they are very few as compared to the benefits it will results to. It is challenging to know who will be responsible for the fail of autonomous driving technology. An excellent example of the problem was found in Waymo, which deal with autonomous technology. (Shaw (2020). It is tough to know who is to carry the burden of the failure of this technology.
References
Panagiotopoulos & Dimitrakopoulos (2018). An empirical investigation on consumers' intentions towards autonomous driving. Transportation research part C: emerging technologies, 95, 7787
Imai (2019). Legal regulation of autonomous driving technology: Current conditions and issues in Japan. IATSS Research, 43(4), 265
Birnbacher & Birnbacher (2017). Fully autonomous driving: Where technology and ethics meet. IEEE Intelligent Systems, 32(5), 3
Rakoff, H., Smith, Innamaa, Barnard, Harrison & Shaw (2020). Building feedback into modelling impacts of automated vehicles: Developing a consensus model and quantitative tool (No. DOT-VNTSC-FHWA-20-10). John A. Volpe National Transportation Systems Center (US).
Claussmann, Revilloud, Gruyer & Glaser (2019). A review of motion planning for autonomous highway driving. IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems, 21(5), 1826-1848.
Yurtsever, Lambert, Carballo & Takeda (2020). A survey of autonomous driving: Common practices and emerging technologies. IEEE access,