July 12, 2016
Part of what it means to be a successful business owner is being able to keep one step ahead of emerging technologies. One of the emerging technologies that are relevant to every business owner who must send his products to market via fleet driving is semi-autonomous vehicles. The whole concept should not be foreign to anyone who has ever used cruise control which provides autonomous driving to a certain degree. Fully autonomous vehicles will be, and to some extent already are, capable of performing actions independent of the driver, such as adaptive cruise control, collision avoidance braking, parking assist as well as other traffic maneuvers. The hope of companies that are poised to use autonomous vehicles in their fleet is that they (a) will reduce the number of accidents; (b) they will increase driver productivity, and (c) maximize fuel efficiency.
That is the hope. However, just as with every other emerging technology there are anticipated downsides to increasing the number of autonomous vehicles in any given fleet. Some of the negatives that experts anticipate with this trend towards automation include:
Yes, it is difficult not to sit and marvel at things such as Google and Tesla’s efforts at autonomously piloted cars. However, for people who ship items back and forwards across this land take a more measured approach to the implications of this autonomy. Business leaders must consider the above factors and law-makers have to consider the impact autonomously piloted may have on legislation. Ultimately, it is a matter of when and not if major companies will add autonomous vehicles to their fleet.