A Helping Hand: Driverless Cars

Driverless cars, or self-driving cars, are the next big change in the automotive industry. They will solve many of the current problems surrounding cars and driving, such as accidents. While some people may argue that self-driving cars will get rid of people’s hobbies, they will actually reduce the amount of accidents, congestion, and increase average speeds, and as a result of that, they will also save time and resources.

Humans, as drivers, are currently the biggest bottlenecks in vehicles. Because of slow reaction times, we do not fully utilize the roads and cars that we created. Because driverless cars are driven by computers, they will have much faster reaction times than humans. And because of higher reaction times, cars will be able to travel much closer together, at much higher speeds. As Randal O’Toole said, “By offering more precise driving, driverless cars would make possible higher top speeds on existing roads.” This means that the capacity of roads will greatly rise, which will increase both the fuel efficiency of cars, and the time efficiency, by traveling closer together, at higher speeds

Having cars travel closer together may seem like it would add more congestion to the roads, but it would actually lessen the amount of congestion. Along with increasing the speeds and capacity of roads, the better reaction times of driverless cars will reduce the traffic that makes commutes agonizingly long. Making commutes shorter will reduce stress, as according to Newsweek, “Studies have found that people with commutes longer than 40 minutes are unhappier, more stressed, and generally experience more worry than those who only have a 10 minute commute.” Reducing stress will make people more efficient when they get to work, allowing them to do more with their time.

Getting rid of more traffic, self-driving cars will almost eliminate accidents. There will still be accidents, caused by computer errors, but the majority of accidents are caused by human error. It is those accidents that waste time and resources. As Randal O’Toole said, “Reducing accidents would not only save lives, it would save the time of people who would otherwise be stuck in congestion caused by accidents.” In addition to drivers, emergency responders’ time will also be saved. Less accidents means less time they spend on the thousands of accidents every day.

However, some people say that driverless cars will get rid of the joy that driving brings them. But this isn’t true, as “The car enthusiast will have to hitch his Mustang up to a driverless car and take it to a different kind of driving range–where he can tool around on a closed course.” (Newsweek) Car enthusiasts will enjoy driving on tracks, where there are no speed limits, and they will be taken off of the road, getting rid of accidents caused by reckless drivers.

Self-driving cars will not only make driving easier and safer. They will lessen the amount of time and resources used while driving. But driverless cars will not just magically appear. Just like the personal computer, driverless cars will require a lot of trial and error, in addition to collaborations between companies. Imagine what your daily commute would be like with a driverless car. Perhaps you would do work in your car, and it would certainly make your commute faster.

Virtual Reality for All: The Radeon RX 480

Besides their new, more modern logo, AMD has an exciting new addition to the Radeon family of graphics cards. At only $199, the Radeon RX 480, AMD hopes to bring Virtual Reality to millions of people. The RX 480’s low price (compared to other VR graphics cards, such as the GTX 980 or the newer GTX 1070 from NVIDIA) allows for “good VR” at a lower cost, which is what the vice president of Radeon Technologies Group, Raja Koduri, uses to explain Virtual Reality coming through headsets such as the HTC Vive, compared to “bad VR” that is headsets such as Google Cardboard, or Samsung’s Gear VR.

Set to formally launch on June 29th, the Radeon™ RX 480 will deliver the world’s most affordable solution for premium PC VR experiences, including a model that is both HTC™ Vive Ready and Oculus™ Rift™ certified and delivering VR capability common in $500 GPUs.

Raja Koduri explained that they are aiming to bring “good VR” to over a hundred million new users. Instead of trying to lower the cost of the headset, AMD is lowering the cost of the PC needed to power the headsets. The GPU, or graphics card, is one of the biggest bottlenecks in terms of budget for Virtual Reality today, costing around $400. And not only will the RX 480 decrease the cost of the graphics card you need for VR, it will also decrease the power you draw from the wall, as AMD claims that it draws less than 150W.

However, While the RX 480 does have some really compelling specs, such as something around 1.08GHz for the boost clock, and 4 to 8 GB of 8Gbps GDDR5, it does have its flaws. One that is minor, but also bothering, is the ports that they put on it. AMD has included three DisplayPort connectors, but only one HDMI. While this might not be that much of a problem on a normal graphics card, they are selling this as a card for Virtual Reality! If you did not know, both the Oculus Rift and the HTC Vive connect to your computer with an HDMI port. This means that, if your monitor uses an HDMI cable, and you want to do VR with this card (which is probably why you would buy it), you would have to buy an adapter for either your monitor or headset. However, this is not really a big deal, since as mentioned before, you can always buy an adapter. But, it is somewhat annoying, since AMD is saying that this is “good VR” for under $200, however, if you end up having to buy an adapter for anywhere from around $1-$30, you might end up paying more than $200 for the graphics part of your VR PC. Again, this is not really a big problem, unless you are on an extremely strict budget and cannot afford to spend that extra bit of money.