Residents in Georgia have no doubt heard much discussion about self-driving cars in the past few years. The development of these vehicles has been a source of debate as some laud autonomous cars with the ability to reduce or even eliminate traffic accidents and fatalities while others allege that these vehicles are not fully safe. While fully autonomous vehicles are not yet the norm on the roads today, it is increasingly common for new cars to come equipped with a variety of self-driving or driver assist technologies.
These autonomous driving features in human-driven cars are supposed to enhance safety but they may actually have the opposite effect in some cases. As explained by ABC News, many of the features that are designed to provide warnings to drivers may actually make the drivers lazy in a way, allowing them to focus less on driving or the traffic and roads around them.
Instead, drivers may rely too heavily on the technologies built into their vehicles and give up some of their responsibility. This, in turn, creates new risks. According to Hot Cars, some of these features include blind spot detection, lane tracing, automatic braking and other technologies that prevent moving into adjacent lanes of traffic.
Research conducted by AAA shows that navigation systems may well be the single most distracting, and therefore dangerous, technology in modern vehicles. It takes a driver’s attention and eyes away from driving for an average of 40 seconds, enough time to travel the length of a football field while travelling at 25 miles per hour.
