Steve Burns
WMAL.com
FAIRFAX – (WMAL) At a recent event showing off automated and connected car technology in Fairfax County, researchers and developers agreed they usually get two starkly different reactions about the industry.
“There’s a lot of both fear and excitement,” John Estrada, CEO of Fairfax-based eTrans, told WMAL. That is, some people are a bit hesitant to hand over control to computers, while others are all too willing.
The reality is found somewhere in between, these experts said. While mainstream technology hasn’t quite reached the watching-Netflix-while-you-ride-to-work level of independence yet (they project it will in the next three to four years), the technology is still much safer than most initially think, and will be a vast improvement over what’s going on today.
“35,000 people die on the roads every year. That’s like a 747 crashing every week,” Estrada said. “We should be able to reduce the number of deaths on the road by 80 or 90 percent.”
Estrada compared it to another time people handed over control to technology.
“It was a big deal when they took operators out of elevators,” he said. “People were very afraid of that.”
Regardless of which camp a potential driver or passenger is in, all it takes is a few minutes in the car itself to become one with the technology, Estrada said.
“All the studies and all the things we’ve seen with people getting into vehicles, you become very comfortable very quickly with it.”
Some fun I had today – taking a ride in a connected car. Yes, you still need to keep an eye on the road. @eTransSystems pic.twitter.com/NW8WJk4N72
— Steve Burns (@StvBurns) May 3, 2017
Copyright 2017 by WMAL.com. All Rights Reserved. (PHOTO: Steve Burns/WMAL)
