Re: How Jaywalking Could Jam Up the Era of Self-Driving Cars (Editorial, August 1, 2019)

As an 18 year old student at Rowan University who enjoys traveling to different cities around the country, people would begin to notice certain patterns about how a city operates on a day to day basis.

Pedestrian rules are loosely followed by the city’s population. A major occurrence in these cities is a life threatening practice called Jaywalking. Jaywalking is dangerous since these people have no control over the flow of traffic and cannot make the distinction between a yielding car and one that is careening down the road. According to the ImpactRecovery Program, Jaywalking kills an average of 1,700 pedestrians per year. This does not take into account serious injuries which make up a lot larger of a statistic.

With today’s autonomous technology, only aggravating the problem, having a car make the split second decision to slam on the brakes to yield for a pedestrian is such a far fetched idea, and would endanger the public at large. During recent times, Volvo has been testing autonomous car technology with little success. They have video evidence of one of their SUVs on autopilot rear-ending another car due to a fault in the radar technology.

The original concept of the automobile was for an operator to be behind the wheel controlling the cars every movement. Cars are meant to be operated by people, not robots, to make the whole world a much safer place.

Reckless American pedestrians are more likely to be struck by autonomous vehicles than by human-driven cars, so self-driving cars are a bad idea.