As technology continues to advance, cars are seeing advancements in safety and driving capabilities that go further than what the driver can do. Cars the can sense when the car needs to break if the driver is distracted. Brakes that are anti-lock which means they distribute different amounts of braking pressure to wheels that may have more traction to prevent loss of control. All of these things are very good for cars and keeping drivers safe but are we close to seeing the "Driverless Car"?

Cars have features now that can help or completely park themselves with the use of sensors. Many helpful gadgets that may help if human error occurs and can even prevent collisions. But then you have to also consider if this technology were to fail or have glitches that could be very dangerous. We can not know how these "smart cars" will age and how we can update the technology in them.

It is definitely possible to create a self-driving car. Many different organizations have succesfully done it but on closed tracks. These tracks do not have the real world complications that can arise such as road work or accidents that cause the car to go on alternate paths because the original one is blocked. This is when the human must take over and redirect the car.

Although there is this talk of a car that can drive without a human, we have not seen a car that is reliable and safe enough to be trusted without the driver being ready to take over when needed. If the driver has to sit at ready all the time then how is it a driverless car? As a driver, I know what I am capable of and I feel best when I am driving and I am in control. It would take a whole lot of trust for me to just turn my car on autopilot and let it take over considering there are many things that can happen while you are driving down the road. Many questions come up, such as, Will the car react in time? Will the technology even know to react? Will the car safely and controllably avoid whatever obsticle is thrown it's way. All these things change if the driver is sitting back not driving because the car apparently can do it all by itself.

Eventually, in the future, it is very possible to see cars with an autopilot function or other self-driving techniques but we are a long way from cars driving without human help. Laws in all but four states make it illegal to use a car that drives itself because, "lawmakers know that safety is best achieved with alert drivers" (Paragraph 9). So it is obvious that we have a ways to go from a legal standpoint until you will see cars driving themselves on these American roads. This set aside, the advancements in technology is doing wonderful things in the safety category. Cars can avoid collisions or alert drivers if they make mistakes like going over the center double yellow lines. This helps prevent the awful head on collision of two cars. In conclusion, we are not terribly far from cars driving themselves. It is more a safety and trust concern rather than the technology being there. Cars will drive themselves more and more but with the aid of the driver always being there and capable of taking over at any time. But does this make them self-driving if the driver must be present and paying attention at all times? Why not keep their attention by just letting the driver, you know, DRIVE?