The End of Auto Accidents?
According to Bill Gates, there will be no more car accidents within 10 years. This is a direct statement from the software giant himself. Here is a blurb straight from the mouth of Gates:
“One of the Microsoft researchers has a goal that there be no car wrecks, no crashes of cars, because by having software that can take over whenever a driver makes a mistake. His view is that we’ll be able to eliminate even that source of death. I was very glad to hear that because, as we solve all these medical things, in fact, these car accidents actually is a fairly significant factor that it’s wonderful that software in 23 years, software can do a lot.”
No more accidents within 10 years is a fairly optimistic statement, even by the king of computers. In this article I will discuss the technology needed (and lack of) to accomplish Gates’ dream.
There are currently two ways for cars to become ‘smart.’ The first way would be to have on board computers with hundreds of sensors to detects every little obstacle one may face on the road. This would drive the costs of already over-expensive automobiles even higher. Within fractions of milliseconds, a car would have to sense and react to the spontaneous maneuvers that drivers of today pull off. Is this possible? Well there is currently a contest going on, sponsored by the pentagon, that is giving $2 million to the first team of engineers that can successfully build a car that can do just that. The car must be able to navigate through ‘real’ traffic (here is an article on the contest). The contest will end after a year, which shows that this type of technology will be available soon.
Bill Gates’ statement was “no more accidents,” not “no more accidents for the rich people who can afford the technology.” If his statement were to become true, technology that is out of reach financially for 99% of Americans today would have to significantly drop in price. The only thing I do not doubt is the software behind his theory. I do believe that Microsoft is capable of writing the ‘brain’ to control these new-age cars.
The second method to accomplish “no more accidents” is with a central ‘brain’ controlling cars that are basically drones. What I mean is the cars themselves will not actually be sensing what’s going on around them, but rather a supercomputer than can tell where exactly each car is in relation to the others. This method is much more out-of-reach than the previous. Even if our satellite systems could be quick enough to send data back and forth between the supercomputer and the automobile, there is not enough bandwidth provided by satellites to accommodate the amount of data required to be transfered. In all reality, this is just not a feasible option.
No matter which method Bill Gates decides to use, everyone already knows his Microsoft logo will be everywhere and he’ll offer some sort of “Genuine Advantage,” which basically means your car will be disabled by a false-positive of stolen software. I don’t think I am alone in hating the Genuine Advantage, and I know it has nothing to do with this article but I just thought I would mention how bad it will be.
So Bill Gates, you have a huge challenge ahead of you, get to work!
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Ha! Microsoft can’t even keep Windows from crashing!