Driverless cars. Once yesterday's dream is slowly becoming reality. Driverless cars are on the horizon. There's certainly good reason to be excited, but these unpiloted vechicles are still a good while off, if they are to live up to the first word in their name, "driverless". Driverless cars should only be used if the car itself can handle the vast majority of the problems it would face on the road.

Truly driverless cars are driverless, not requiring a driver at all. Today's driverless cars can only perform under few conditions, one being able to handle driving functions at speeds up to 25 miles per hour. Certainly not ideal in today's society. They need to notify the driver when the road requires human skills, such as navigating through work zones and around accidents. Driverless cars should only be used if the car can handle 95% or above of the driving functions. Getting the driver's attention constantly would be very annoying to the driver, who bought the car so they wouldn't have to do any driving in the first place. Some situations are understandable, I'm sure most drivers would agree, but I would not want a "driverless car" if it can't drive itself. The people interested in these types of cars would want entertainment so they don't have to just stare out the windshield the whole ride, so entertainment options should be available while not sacrificing safety. An added bonus of appealing to a larger market would be to have the option to turn off the artificial driving, and control the car yourself. Not only could it be deadly if something went wrong, but totally relying on the car doing the driving for you, after some time, would ensure that your driving skills are low, thus even more danger if the car malfunctions. Traffic laws currently are written with the assumption that the only safe car has a human driver in control at all times. Those laws will change if driverless cars can prove themselves to handle situations on the road, safely. On the issue of liability, we should let laws be put in place before the cars are released to the general public. That way, there is no question who's falt it is if someone's driverless car hits a driver controlled car, one with no option of being driverless or vice versa.

In conclusion, driverless cars should only be released if they meet the safety standards necessary to meet government regulations, while providing the consumer with entertainment, that can easily be turned off by the car if there is a rare situation the car cannot meet. These cars are the cars of the future. Why not make them the best that they can be?