Picture this: You’ve had a long arduous day at work, you’re stressed, not mention possibly more tired than you ever have been in your entire life. You’ve finally left the office, but there’s a problem – you still have to drive home.
Road safety campaigners will tell you just how dangerous it is to drive when you’re tired. Reactions are slow, you daydream, you will get impatient so you might take unnecessary risks. The advice is simple – if you’re tired don’t drive.
There is a solution: driverless cars. In 2010 Google fitted seven Toyota Priuses with radars, sensors, maps, laser rangefinders and a whole load of other technical wizardry which meant these cars could drive all by themselves without human input.
Pretty impressive I think you’ll agree, and the project is getting closer to one day being rolled out globally. This is all great, but what are the pros and cons of driverless cars?
Pros
The fleet of self-driving Google cars have so far clocked-up more than 300,000 miles without an accident, whereas if there’s a human at the wheel the average is 165,000 miles.
You won’t need to worry about driver fatigue. Whether it’s as in the scenario above or if you’re on a long journey and you feel yourself getting tired you can switch to “driverless mode” and continue with your trip – although it might look strange to other motorists to see you snoring away in your seat. The gift of time.
You’ll often see people commuting to work on the train or the bus flicking through paperwork or preparing for a presentation. Your driverless car will give you that time where you’ll have nothing better to do plus there’s the added advantage of peace and quiet.
Cons
There’s no substitute for experience. They say that you only start to learn to drive properly after you have passed your driving test.
You also need to be confident in your own ability which only comes with years of practice. Like any other skill, your
driving ability will diminish the longer you go without using it, so if you have a driverless car you may be inclined never to take control.
When driverless cars become more commonplace it will be interesting to see if hours logged in “driverless mode” will be a consideration when you’re looking for a
car insurance quote.
When you’re looking for a quote, the more experienced you are the better deal you can get, for example compared to a teenager who has just passed his or her test, compared to someone with several years of experience. It will be interesting to see how the technology develops in the years to come.
Catherine Halsey writes for a digital marketing agency on a range of subjects. This article links back to http://www.admiral.com/car-insurance/