Driverless Cars Pre-Reading 2: The Way of the Future

Tech companies believe that self-driving cars are important because technology has the ability to create a smart car that is always alert and never distracted. Consequently, self-driving technology will improve road safety by eliminating human driving errors such as speeding or aggressive driving, inattentiveness, slow reaction time, or inexperience. For example, a study by the Eno Centre for Transportation predicts that if 90% of cars in the United States were autonomous, the number of road accidents in the US alone would decrease from six million per year to 1.3 million (Thompson, 2016).

Other advantages of self-driving technology are environmental benefits such as reducing carbon emissions and giving people more free time during long work commutes or road travel. Some research studies point out that driverless tech will add seven trillion USD to the global economy and save hundreds of thousands of lives in the next few decades (Davies, 2018).

Google has been working on self-driving technology since 2009 when they created Waymo. Watch the video below and answer the questions while you listen.

https://waymo.com/tech/

1. When did Google begin working on self-driving cars? _____________________

2. Lidar technology works by sending out millions of _____________________ per second.

3. Waymo detects how far away objects are and how fast they are moving by using

_____________________.

4. Waymo can detect everything in its surroundings and ______________ what things might do next.

5. Waymo’s technology allows it to: see

______________

predict

___________

∎ English for Academic Purposes: Stiner, G. & Graham, T. ∎ IAE for IT - Module 1 - Descriptive Essays

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∎ English for Academic Purposes: Stiner, G. & Graham, T. ∎ IAE for IT - Module 1 - Descriptive Essays

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